This week’s Christian ScienceBible lesson on “Matter” has a wonderful account which addresses one of the most insidious lies being perpetrated by the carnal mind on society—the suggestion that older people are more susceptible to the belief in COVID19. Hopefully you are studying it in the books rather than Full Text. Otherwise you’ll miss the complete story!
In Exodus 4 we read of God speaking to Moses and telling him that because the children of Israel are in bondage to the Egyptians (representing the false laws of medicine, physiology, pathology, gerontology, sensuality), God wants Moses to go back to Egypt and bring them out of slavery and into the promised land (of healing and freedom). Moses is 80 years old!
He responds, in effect, “What are you nuts? Last time I was there, Pharaoh tried to kill me! Pharaoh has a huge army which could crush us in a second! He’ll never release us from bondage.” (Sounds like the way the carnal mind argues with us when we pray to be freed from fear and suffering). “Besides,” the carnal mind probably was suggesting to Moses, “I’m 80 years old. I should have retired long ago. What can I do at this age!”
So God gave Moses a “crash course” in Christian Science! He said, “What do you have in your hand?” “A rod (the very thing that he had always relied on to protect him, to guide his sheep, to lean on when tired.” God said, “Throw it down on the ground!” When Moses did, the rod became a poisonous serpent capable of killing him ( or so it seemed). But God said, “Grab it by the tail.” Now if the dangerous serpent were real, grabbing it by the tail would have resulted in a deadly bite. But God was telling him, “Evil is not real. It has no power. Now act as if you believe that truth. Grab hold of it with the confidence that it is nothing—absolutely poweless.” When Moses is obedient and trusts God, grabbing the serpent by the tail, it again becomes a staff upon which to lean in any trial that comes up.
If you have read all of Exodus, you will know that when God performs that so-called miracle before Pharaoh’s magicians, they too throw down their rods which become serpents as well. The matter physicians and material scientists always claims to be able to replicate and replace God’s power. But Moses’ serpent swallows all the other serpents and then becomes a rod again in the hand of Moses.
Although the lesson stops there, I recommend you finish reading about the “crash course in CS” that God is giving to Moses! (Ex. 4:6-8). Next God tells Moses to stick his hand into his shirt and pull it out. When Moses does this, his hand appears to have developed the dreaded contagious disease called leprosy. But God tells him to stick it back into his shirt again and when he takes it out a second time, his hand is totally normal and healthy. God was illustrating to Moses that all disease is entirely mental—"the procuring cause and foundation of all sickness” is one of three things: fear, ignorance (not really knowing and believing the allness and supremacy of Spirit), and sin (missing the mark, turning away from God to worship, fear, love matter and the material world). SH 411:20.
This “crash course in CS” was sufficient to enable Moses to stand up to, overcome and eliminate any opposition to God’s law, God’s plan for His children, or God’s harmonious government. For 40 years Moses led 600,000 men plus women and children and animals through the desert to the promised land, without any highway rest stops along the way, no 7-Eleven’s, no restaurants, not even any benches to sit on or beds to lie on. And yet he and the men God gave him to do this work were sustained throughout the whole trial. Their strength, wisdom, and clarity of thought remained until the very end (when Moses was 120 years old). [See also SH 321:6-2 where Mrs. Eddy explains both stories].
Mary Baker Eddy assures us that man is neither young nor old (it’s a good thing, since now mortal mind is suggesting even young adults are susceptible to these lies, but this too is impossible). We are all at the point of perfection eternally—“the noon of true manhood”. It doesn’t even make sense that people who have been in this human experience for many years would be at risk or that their health and strength could diminish when the fact is that the more we learn about God’s perfection and our oneness with God, the MORE strength, the MORE health, the MORE freedom we should be manifesting year after year after year!
“Let the “male and female” of God's creating appear. Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into newness of life and recognizing no mortal nor material power as able to destroy. Let us rejoice that we are subject to the divine “powers that be.” Such is the true Science of being. (SH 249:5–10)
Christine Driessen