A refuge from contagion

News of an active flu and cold season doesn't need to come in like a tidal wave, leaving individuals feeling fearful and helpless. Through prayer, we can gain a tangible sense of God's omnipotence which can show that contagion is not beyond God's control.

How can prayer help lessen the fear of something threatening out there that lies waiting to invade? Abiding in and feeling an immovable sense of the allness, ever-presence, and power of Love as the only cause brings about only goodness and harmony.

Although various causes are associated with catching the flu or a cold, the Bible includes this promise: "As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come" (Prov. 26:2). Modern Bible translations shed some light on this verse. For example, the New Revised Standard Version translates, "Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying, an undeserved curse goes nowhere." Contagion, its so-called causes, and the suffering that goes with it, can naturally dissolve through prayer.

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science and founded this newspaper, wrote "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," a book that has enlightened many readers with the true meaning of health. It states: "If what opposes God is real, there must be two powers, and God is not supreme and infinite. Can Deity be almighty, if another mighty and self-creative cause exists and sways mankind?" (p. 357). Answering a confident no to this question, and knowing why, constitutes prayer.

This prayer is knowing and feeling in the depths of our being that Love is the only cause. And that enables us to identify ourselves and others as the children of Love – perfect and without a single element of evil. Since Love, our Father and Mother, causes our being, then we, as Love's children, are the effect of this Love. The law of harmony binds this tender relationship under all circumstances. This law of harmony overrules contagion and makes it lawless – without anything to enforce it.

Science and Health also states, "God never punishes man for doing right, for honest labor, or for deeds of kindness, though they expose him to fatigue, cold, heat, contagion" (p. 384). If you're helping a family member or friend who's not feeling well, you can take heart by understanding through prayer that your defense is right with you in the very action of caring. While caring for another, you can understand that you are the expression of Love. This enables you to be selfless, tender, and calm. This is a living prayer. It unites one and all with the supreme cause of Love and its law of health and wholeness.

At one point, a college student was struggling with a severe cold. Others around her also had colds, and the evidence of contagion was very clear. She decided to call a Christian Science practitioner, one who prays with and for others for spiritual healing. During her telephone conversation with the practitioner, she felt the presence of divine Love filling all space. To her this meant that there was no space for a virus, no cause for sickness, no law of contagion, and no effect of suffering. Those were the unhealthy thoughts that she shut out of her consciousness. When she hung up the phone, she felt as if a faucet had been turned off, and that was the end of the cold.

Any contagious sickness that's predicted doesn't have to happen and then follow a course until everyone has succumbed to it, as dominoes fall one after another. All that is unlike divine Love must be subject to Love's power because God is supreme. Nothing can overthrow His reign of health, purity, and goodness.

Thou art my hiding place;
thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about
with songs of deliverance. Psalms 32:7