No Exit From Love

HE gently drew me aside and told me, ``Relax, you're living in divine Love.'' It did me a world of good to receive this counsel from a person whom I had asked to pray for me. I can't recall what the problem was, but the counsel has stayed with me ever since because it was based on the certainty that God's creation is the only reality.

In the Bible, the book of Acts says of God, Spirit, ``In him we live, and move, and have our being'' (l7:28). And John's first letter assures us, ``God is love'' (4:8). The logical and correct conclusion is that we live, move, and have our very being in infinite, divine Love. This is confirmed by experience when we find healing through prayerfully identifying our true, spiritual environment of coexistence with God as His perfect offspring.

Realizing the spiritual fact of our true whereabouts, I've found, relieves nervousness, tension, or even a daily dread that we might otherwise feel is reasonable. In truth we are not besieged by difficulties but surrounded by pure and perfect Love. We are witnesses and expressions of the spiritual affection, warmth, and care found in God, and thus are not subject to believing hatred, evil, fear, or chaos has any power over us. On the divinely sound basis of acknowledging and accepting these truths, we can increasingly let go of anxiety. We don't in any way relax our prayerful watch, but we overcome fear through prayer. Because all reality is found in God and His creation, there is no way out of the safety and security of divine Love, and we would not want to exit even if we could!

If there is a ``no exit'' sign for man in the spiritual haven of divine reality, there is also a ``no entry'' sign for all unspiritual qualities. Hatred, lust, pride, resentment, fear, can never enter Love's kingdom and make us feel we're on the outside of good, looking in. It is only these wrong thoughts, though, that are excluded. We never are--never can be--outside of divine Love, because there is no outside. At every point our real identities belong in divine Love. To the degree that we prayerfully exclude ungodly characteristics from our thinking, we open our hearts to recognizing and experiencing more and more of this priceless reality.

This proved true for me at a time when I was terribly agitated by the behavior of others. I felt they were hindering my joy and freedom. Eventually, my prayers helped me see how unconditionally I lived in divine Love, no matter how troubling the circumstances around me seemed to be. I saw that nothing could dislodge either me, or anyone else, from man's permanent abode in infinite Love. I didn't need to wait until the details of our experience changed to confirm this. I could know the all-important reality of Love's onliness and allness immediately. This recognition healed my agitation, and I came to see how I could trust God to adjust according to His will and wisdom the behavior both of me and of those with whom I appeared to disagree.

Christ Jesus knew there was no coming to and going from Love, and proved it by his supreme record of healing. Situations and circumstances alter, but we can hold to this rock of the Christ, Truth: man's unbroken living, moving, and being in the heavenly harmony of God. The Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, explains in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, ``The relations of God and man, divine Principle and idea, are indestructible in Science; and Science knows no lapse from nor return to harmony, but holds the divine order or spiritual law, in which God and all that He creates are perfect and eternal, to have remained unchanged in its eternal history'' (pp. 470-471).

So, relax! You are living in divine Love, and there's no accidental or even deliberate way to leave the allness of good. God has placed you there, and holds you there, and He never even momentarily loosens His firm but tender grasp.

Bible Verse

The Lord shall give

that which is good.

Psalms 85:12