Watching Point 417

417 — WATCH that you understand the reason for being absent from the body and present with the Lord. If a gangster wanted to get a bomb into the house of a man, he might place it in the hands of the latter’s child; then he would frighten the child, and it would run into the house with the bomb.

When mortal mind gets hold of a mental picture that frightens it, it immediately runs with it into the body. If, when it was thus frightened, it should run up and mingle with God, it would lose its fear and no harm would ensue.

Mortal mind and mortal body are like a match and sandpaper. When our thought goes up to God and out to humanity, instead of into the body, we do not become anxious about symptoms, because we are doing God’s work, and so there is no match of disease ignited. In Science and Health we read, “We should forget our bodies in remembering good and the human race” (261:31).

We render mortal mind harmless when we keep it busy with God’s business, so that it has no time to trespass on the forbidden premises called the body. As these are kept apart, the former cannot make trouble for the latter, even though in definition they are one.

Mortal mind knows nothing of how to care for its body, so it feeds it with death. We must learn to trust it to God. We have not turned our bodies over to God to care for, as long as we play the role of back-seat driver. We should regard our bodies as an ice fisherman regards his little red flags. When one waves, he knows he has caught a fish. When our body seems to complain, we know that some error in thought needs to be corrected.