During our town’s shelter-in-place order in the spring of 2020, I woke up one morning feeling heavy-headed and not myself, with unusual symptoms. 

That morning I completed my daily practice of praying with a little extra emphasis on health, and continued my day at home determined not to be hindered. By the end of the day, though, the symptoms had worsened, and my breathing had become difficult.

I slept fine but woke up early to find that my breathing had become more labored, and I had some new symptoms. I again prayed and really tried to know that my identity as a pure and innocent child of God was safe in His care. But that evening a fever developed.

When my wife went to bed, I made my way down to my office in the basement. I got on the computer to reread a recent spirituality blog, but the symptoms were so overwhelming that I became very fearful. Any spiritual peace I had been feeling, and thoughts of the truth about my being that I had been trying to keep front and center, seemed to fly right out the window, and I was panicking: “Do I have coronavirus? How do I protect my wife? Am I going to die? What do I do?” 

But then I was suddenly jolted out of these mesmeric fears by this thought: “You know what to do, and you’ve been doing it! Turn yourself over to God.” Almost instantly the panic dissipated. I sat there praying with truths I had learned as a student of Christian Science throughout my life—truths about God as Spirit, and man as God’s spiritual expression, and I was inspired to reread some things I had recently been making a point to read each day. 

The first article I read can be found in Mary Baker Eddy’s Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896 and is titled “Contagion” (pp. 228–229). In it, the author points out: “Whatever man sees, feels, or in any way takes cognizance of, must be caught through mind; inasmuch as perception, sensation, and consciousness belong to mind and not to matter. Floating with the popular current of mortal thought without questioning the reliability of its conclusions, we do what others do, believe what others believe, and say what others say. Common consent is contagious, and it makes disease catching.”

I could see how I was “floating with the popular current” of thought and participating in “common consent.” That’s what is contagious, I realized, and not a microscopic element of matter. Mrs. Eddy goes on to explain that if we believed as sincerely that health is catching when we are exposed to a healthy person, and that “good is more contagious than evil, since God is omnipresence,” we’d find a much better effect and “the whole human race would become healthier, holier, happier, and longer lived.” My growing spiritual conviction of the truth and power of these ideas helped me see why I didn’t need to continue to give in to the common, fearful current of thought. 

From there I moved on to the second item I had started reading daily—Psalm 91 in the Bible. I stopped when I read, “Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence” (verse 3). I had wondered for a while what the definition of pestilence was. I had always thought of pestilence as a persistent sickness or problem but wondered if there were more to it. The definition I found is “a contagious or infectious epidemic disease that is virulent and devastating” (merriam-webster.com). Wow. A psalm written thousands of years ago all of a sudden became so applicable to me right then. Verse four reads, “He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.” These verses helped strengthen my resolve to trust in God completely, and I continued to read psalm after psalm, enjoying the theme of protection for mankind and gratitude to God. 

I don’t know how long I read, but when I finished, I realized I felt perfectly normal. There was no fever, no sweating, no labored breathing, no symptoms at all, and most importantly, I had no fear. After two days, this developing health concern had been destroyed by opening my heart to what I already knew to be true about me. I was grateful that I’d been healed and that my wife never experienced any symptoms from her loving support of me during this time. Still, my wife and I remained in quarantine the appropriate number of days. It’s been a year and a half since then, and I’ve been joyfully moving through my days unafraid and completely healthy.

Mrs. Eddy concludes her “Contagion” article by stating, “A calm, Christian state of mind is a better preventive of contagion than a drug, or than any other possible sanative method; and the ‘perfect Love’ that ‘casteth out fear’ is a sure defense.” As ideas of the infinite Mind, God, we all have access to, and in fact cannot be kept from, God’s all-powerful, omnipresent, health-giving love for man. My hope in sharing this is that it will help free others from fear and enable them to see that healing is possible when we turn to God. I like to think that this healing demonstration was made for all of humanity.

Chris Rankin
St. Louis, Missouri, US