No Need for Fatigue

Bringing a spiritual perspective to world events and daily life.

Global travel has become common for many people, who fly regularly across continents and oceans. One common complaint is fatigue and tiredness, known as jet lag. People deal with this in a variety of ways. Some try changing their sleeping and eating patterns several days before departure. Others alter their diets, take drugs, or do exercises. But it's really not necessary to dwell in the never-never land of grogginess and disorientation. Accepting jet lag, or any other type of fatigue, as law puts a person at the mercy of external factors and takes away his or her ability to function normally.

A psalm in the Bible asks of God, "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there . . . . If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me" (139:7-10). This is a law: no matter where we are, God is taking care of us. The Psalmist understood that God is good and omnipotent.

The experience of missing our usual amount of sleep and being tired as a result is not a law to our lives. The founder of The Christian Science Monitor, Mary Baker Eddy, explained "The scientific and permanent remedy for fatigue is to learn the power of Mind over the body or any illusion of physical weariness, and so destroy this illusion, for matter cannot be weary and heavy-laden." This sentence from page 217 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures refers to Mind as another name for God. Mind is good, as God is good. The divine Mind could not possibly send forth an idea unlike itself.

We truly do not have to suffer from being tired or fatigued for any reason. My husband and I used to battle jet lag when we made transcontinental airplane flights. After a long flight, we would need two or three days before we felt rested and back on schedule. We decided to pray for a solution to this problem.

We had previously learned, as the psalm mentioned above says, that God's help is always available to us, wherever we are and whatever we are doing. Turning to God, we asked to understand the spiritual law behind this psalm, a law we knew could destroy all discord, including fatigue.

The book of Second Corinthians says, "Now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation" (6:2). This became the context within which to view our travels. We saw that since each moment-each "now"-is the acceptable time for salvation, there is no other set of circumstances to adjust to. We began to feel the conviction that we could never be out of God's presence, which meant never being subject to exhaustion. Hours and minutes were not determining factors in the "now" of God's day. Time was not, we realized, part of the infinite Mind that is God.

Weariness is just as much a mental concept as is time. And Christian Science shows that mental concepts can be improved by understanding spiritual facts. One such fact, found in Science and Health, is that knowing God is knowing what is true. God is Truth, and the book says, "The consciousness of Truth rests us more than hours of repose in unconsciousness" (p. 218).

My husband and I continued our prayer, asking God to help us understand more of His truth. It occurred to us that Christ Jesus had shown how time and space can be subjugated when he boarded a ship in the middle of the Sea of Galilee and was immediately on the shore of that large body of water (see John 6:21). Neither time nor space had deterred him. This can be a useful example now, today.

On the next trip we flew fourteen hours nonstop. We spent three weeks traveling, and flew fourteen more hours on a return flight. At the end of each flight we were able to sleep peacefully and soundly. We never felt tired the following day or at any other time. We had learned that altered schedules and sleep patterns cannot cause us weariness, because this is not possible in God's creation. Since that time we have taken other trips and been free from jet lag. We are confident that God did not create fatigue of any kind.

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