When An Accident Happens

        My husband and I were on an outing in the Oklahoma countryside when climbing on rocks, I happened to slip off, badly twisting my foot.  While I silently declared certain truths taught in Christian Science, this statement from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures came to my thought:  "When an accident happens, you think or exclaim, 'I am hurt!'  Your thought is more powerful than your words, more powerful than the accident itself, to make the injury real.

        "Now reverse the process.  Declare that you are not hurt and understand the reason why, and you will find the ensuing good effects to be in exact proportion to your disbelief in physics, and your fidelity to divine metaphysics, confidence in God as All, which the Scriptures declare Him to be."  These words are by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of my religion. 

        I pondered this reassuring statement and was able to carry out the day's plans.  However, that evening the foot began to cause me much discomfort, making sleep impossible.  By the next morning it was extremely painful to place any weight on the foot.  Feeling the need for prayerful support, I phone a Christian Science practitioner, whose very first words were, "It never happened!"

        This joyously spoken conviction of man's uninvadable spiritual wholeness brought a wonderful sense of comfort.  The mesmerism of fear and pain began to abate, and several hours later all evidence of the accident had completely vanished.

        I was of course grateful to be free from pain and incapacity, but even more for the clearer realization that life is actually in Spirit, God.

        If someone were to overhear a mother assuring her frightened child who had just awakened from a bad dream that it never happened, he would not dispute the truth of such a statement.  Yet he might find the same words surprising, perhaps difficult to understand, when spoken after the occurrence of an accident.  Nevertheless, they have a scientifically demonstrable basis, and have been proved true countless times.

        Scriptural authority for denying the reality of an accident, is found in the first chapter of Genesis, which says plainly that God made man in His image and likeness.  Because man is God's reflection, he is spiritual, perfect.  Man's real being has never been material or subject to mortal beliefs of chance and accident.  He has never been apart from his divine source, God, for a moment.  The Psalmist sang, "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations."  It is for this very reason that one is eternally immune to accidents of any kind.  Spiritual existence is the reality; the belief of life in matter is the dream.  As a divine idea dwelling in God, man is and always has been preserved by His unerring laws of order, safety, harmony, and invulnerability to harm.

        Christ Jesus demonstrated man's sonship with God, Spirit.  He proved by his countless cures of sin, sickness, and lack that man's true, spiritual selfhood is intact, eternally secure.  And Christian Science, which explains the Master's teachings, brings to light the real man, who is continuously upheld by his heavenly Father, divine Love.  This Science shows the eternal existence and identity of each child, man, and woman to be divine, beyond the reach of misfortune, pain, disfigurement, or accident of any description.

        And Paul proved the powerlessness of accidents when he restored to life a young man who had accidentally fallen from a window.  Being assured that God is Life, Paul said to those nearby, "Trouble not yourselves; for his life is in him."

        We need to understand the unreality of all discord and its consequent powerlessness to separate us from God, divine Mind.  In the measure that we do, we possess spiritual authority to deny the suggestion that a given situation will require lengthy recuperation.

        We do not continue to suffer throughout the day from last night's dream.  In like manner, why should we accept penalty from events equally as illusive?  The events comprising the mortal dream of material existence never really touch you and me, God's beloved children.