One night, I woke up feeling extremely unwell and reached out to God in prayer. A helpful illustration came to me.
Picture this: You’re a busy chief executive. All day long, you sit in your office as people hurry in dropping reports on your desk. The reports provide information about the condition of your company, and you’re receiving them so quickly that you’ve barely read one before you need to move on to the next.
Strangely, these reports conflict – some say the company is doing well, others say it’s performing poorly. Then, as reports of crises pile so high on your desk you can barely see over the mountain of paper, you stop reading. It’s impossible to go on like this! Instead, you start noticing who is delivering the reports.
A neighbor walks in. He has some thoughts on the company he wants you to consider. Then a family member drops by with a big, impressively organized binder, followed by a popular news anchor in your town who hands you his analysis of your company.
At one point, you see your company’s accountant slip in, but her neatly typed one-pager soon gets lost in the sea of documents.
As you read what people from outside the company brought, you begin to see that they have no correct information about or understanding of your company. With that, you realize that not only do you not have to read the false reports, you don’t even need to receive them. You drop them straight in the trash because you know their messengers have no authority.
This quickly clears up space on your desk, and you spot the neatly typed one-pager from your accountant. Good news! Your company is in sound condition. In fact, the data shows that it always has been and always will be.
As I prayed with this analogy in the middle of the night, I was learning that the conflicting reports of the material senses, which may try to come to us through fearful suggestions from family, friends, strangers, and even as we scroll through our phones, are not to be trusted. They are all superseded by the one true report: God’s, Spirit’s, accurate report of completeness and perfection. Because we reflect God, we’re entirely spiritual, free from false labels of suffering and sickness. And as I considered this, I was healed. Understanding and rejoicing in the true report brought quick relief from the illness.
What God reports is always accurate, and pure and true messages constantly flow to us, since we are His children. In Genesis we read, “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (1:31). God created all of His creation, including man, perfect and whole. The book of Job says, “The spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life” (33:4). And, in the words of Christ Jesus, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). These statements illuminate what’s true about our being.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, wrote in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” “According to Christian Science, the only real senses of man are spiritual, emanating from divine Mind. Thought passes from God to man, but neither sensation nor report goes from material body to Mind. The intercommunication is always from God to His idea, man” (p. 284). Ministering thoughts from divine Mind, God, never stop speaking to us.
To me, a true report from God reads something like this: “You are My precious child. Your prospects for good are forever unlimited. You are receptive to Me. You have sound health and morals, preserved by Soul. You abide in the kingdom of heaven, under the shadow of the Almighty. You are innocent. You are the loved of Love.”
I’ve found that if my mental “desk” is piling up and I feel overwhelmed by conflicting opinions and predictions, I can quickly look up from these reports and instead notice where they’re coming from. If the source isn’t God, good, I reject them. Into the trash! There’s only one report we ever need or need to act on – what’s from God.
Originally published in the December 2025 issue of The Christian Science Journal.
