Tuesday, October 32

That really is what the calendar said. It was one of those metal ones that you change by turning small knobs, and as I looked at it I was annoyed as well as amused. It was obvious that the youngest of our six children had been occupying his busy little fingers with the forbidden activity of playing with the objects on my desk.

In spite of my exasperation over his disobedience, I had to laugh at that absurd non-date. And over the years this brief episode, so unimportant in itself , has nonetheless served as a useful reminder of the impotence of any false information that evil, the supposed opposite of God, may present.

The evidence of evil - whether it takes the form of disease, hatred, loneliness, poverty - is essentially false, because God, who is good, does not create or recognize His unlikeness. The mixture of good and evil that we perceive with the five physical senses is a counterfeit - a false picture of what He actually creates. It might be likened to a dream, from which we need to awake.

The awakening comes, by degrees, as we better understand God and as we purify our thoughts and lives in accord with Christ Jesus' teachings. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, makes this thought-provoking statement in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: ''Mortal existence is a dream of pain and pleasure in matter, a dream of sin, sickness, and death; and it is like the dream we have in sleep, in which every one recognizes his condition to be wholly a state of mind. In both the waking and the sleeping dream, the dreamer thinks that his body is material and the suffering is in that body.'' n1

n1 Science and Health, p. 188.

The physical senses are just as unreliable as Tuesday, October 32! Take a snapshot of railroad tracks. Sure enough, you can see right in the picture that there are two rails converging. But you're not worried about the safety of anyone who may be traveling on those tracks. You know that the V-shaped image is an illusion. If someone you know is traveling by ship, do you gaze out at the horizon and feel apprehensive about him? Again, you have no doubts about the shape of the earth and the continuation of the ocean beyond your line of vision.

We smile at the concept of a ship sailing off a flat planet. Yet we are constantly accepting pictures of sin, disease, sorrow, crime, lack - innumerable types of human misery - as though they were fixed facts, realities about which we can do little or nothing. Of course, such conditions can sometimes seem overwhelming. But a study of the teachings and works of Christ Jesus shows that his message to humanity was the promise of God's unfailing goodness and care.

Jesus was able to perform marvelous healings through his absolute, unwavering understanding that God, good, is omnipotent. He not only healed all types of sickness and sin but promised that others can do likewise: ''Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.'' n2

n2 John 14:12.

With patience and persistent Christian effort we can learn to follow the example of the Master. The starting point of our efforts, their very basis, is eternal spiritual truth - the truth of God's infinite goodness and man's perfection as His likeness. From this standpoint we can begin to demonstrate through Christian healing that the discord reported by the material senses is false, a misconception of what constitutes reality - as illegitimate as Tuesday, October 32. DAILY BIBLE VERSE Do ye look at things after the outward appearences? Corinthians 10:7