Near Halloween, folks around here like to decorate. They display multiple pumpkins, gigantic spiders, inflated Frankensteins, and anything else they think fits into ghoulish fun. I passed a mailbox recently that had some décor that offered me some spiritual insight. Hanging by its tail off this mailbox was a “dead rat”. This “dead rat” was obviously a stuffed animal. It never had been a live rat. It never was a dead rat. It was just the expression of a concept—yucky dead rat.
This made me think: man is not a dead rat. Nor is he a live rat. He is not a rat at all! More significantly, man is not a mortal. He is not a live, healthy mortal, nor is he a sadly dead mortal. He is not an in-trouble mortal. He is not a sick, diseased, or stressed mortal. He is not mortal, ever. That “dead rat” hanging from that mailbox hadn’t ever been a “live rat”. It never was a genuine rat at all. Man is not a mortal!
“Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas….” (Science and Health, by Mary Baker Eddy, pg. 475:13-16) This is the accurate and everlasting statement of man’s being. Man never left God for residence or penalty in matter.
