Handling sudden suggestions

The first thing I noticed about this week"s Bible Lesson on Unreality was right in the Golden Text. "God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all." (I John 1:5)  I knew the Lesson would be shining the light of Truth, as explained in Science and Health, on anything God did not make. This would bring about healing as we saw the unreality of the error. But today as I worked with the Lesson I saw how I could substitute whatever error I was praying about in all the places where the word 'darkness' appears. In section one Mrs. Eddy makes this so clear and easy to do. Let's say you were dealing with the suggestion of sickness or lack or fear. As you read the Lesson make that substitution where the word darkness appears. For example, "We are sometimes led to believe that (sickness, lack, fear) is as real as light (Truth); but Science affirms (sickness, lack, fear) to be only a mortal sense of the absence of (Truth), at the coming of which (sickness, lack, fear) lose the appearance of reality". Whatever you use to fill in the blank can be eliminated, healed, by shining the light of what is real and true about God's perfect, good, creation. Whatever the claim or suggestion appears to be, it lacks a divine cause because it was not created or caused by God.

Section Two has a perfect example of this with the story of Moses' rod and the appearance of disease. First God asks Moses to cast his rod, his symbol of authority that identifies him as a prophet, on the ground. Don't let anything suggest to you that you could ever be less than the child of God and the idea of divine Mind. Do not associate yourself with the person created in Genesis Two, made from the dust of the ground. Don't let error try to cast you in that mold. Moses let go of the rod and it appeared to suddenly change into a deadly snake. Has something suddenly appeared to change in your life or your body? It can be frightening, and Moses was so frightened he turned and ran. But God told him to come back and pick that 'snake' up by the tail. You've got to be kidding, pick it up the most dangerous way? No, pick it up fearlessly as you know it could not possibly be what it suddenly appeared to be. So Moses picks it up, by the tail, and it became his familiar rod. Just what it had always really been.

Then God has him tuck his hand into his shirt and when he takes it out a disease has suddenly appeared there. Has something like that ever happened to you? A disease just suddenly seems to have appeared on your body or in it. But God has him repeat the process and when he removes his hand it
'was turned like as the other'. It looks just like it had to begin with, no sign of disease, no gradual fading away but instantly gone.

Handle those 'serpents' when they seem to suddenly appear in your life. Don't be afraid. God has never left you defenceless but has given you absolute dominion over anything that threatens you or suggests it can cause disease. It lacks divine authority while you have it, the authority to shine the light of Truth on what is unreal to expose the lie and see what was really there all the time.