Loving One Another
SHE could barely speak the language, and it was obvious that she was not just a stranger but a frightened one at that. She didn't even know how to use the airport's pay telephone because she couldn't read the instructions in that language. Yet another woman--who understood her language--took time to help her make her telephone call and send her on her way. A small incident, perhaps, but one that the foreigner still remembers nearly twenty years later.
I know, because I was that foreigner, and I still can feel the relief and gratitude that flooded my thought when the woman came to my rescue. I had been praying to God for His guidance, and the woman's help seemed a very literal answer to prayer.
I don't know if the woman was religious, but to me she symbolized the Christian who lives the teachings of Christ Jesus. In his Sermon on the Mount, he declared, ``Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven." It is not so hard to do this when everything is going all right in our own lives and we are feeling secure. But if jobs are scarce or a str anger's customs are unusual, we may find it more difficult to obey Jesus' guidance.
At times when it's hard for me to love, I find it helpful to think again of the reason Jesus expects us to treat our ``enemies kindly. He says, ``that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven," and he goes on to explain God's impartial love.
This love is spiritually based and belongs to all of us without measure, but we are much more able to see its infinite nature if we aren't trying to hoard it for ourselves. Fear would make us believe that we live in a world of finite opportunities. Competition is the watchword of such a world, and loss and lack are daily events. Yet this scenario is not what is actually governing our lives, however real and powerful it may seem. If we turn to God in prayer, we soon see what and who we really are.
As the children of God, we are not finite, driven beings but are instead spiritual--made up of qualities such as love, intelligence, purity, wisdom, goodness. Under God's government, we are able to express these qualities and to see them in others. This occurs as we give up the material sense of ourselves and accept our true, spiritual nature. When we pray along these lines, we begin to open up our thoughts and lives to God's infinitely good power and to experiencing His love for us. Learning to know God
as Love, or Soul, we find it easier to trust Him to care for us. And this is the genuine basis of our love for others, as well. We also begin to recognize that since all are in fact His children, there doesn't need to be any conflict. We each have the opportunities for good that we need.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, brings out this point in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She writes, ``Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind, and happiness would be more readily attained and would be more secure in our keeping, if sought in Soul." These ``infinite resources" are available to each one of us, and to those others who we may fear will take our jobs or opportunities. An all-loving God would not deprive one child in or der to satisfy another. We each have a direct, inviolable relationship to God, and nothing can ever take that away from us. Through prayer, we each can see more and more of God's love acting in our lives and taking away the fear that would blind us to His presence. And as this occurs, we will, like the woman in the airport, reach out in love to others.
