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Finding our home in God

A Christian Science perspective: Home is much more than a physical structure or a place.

While many naturally associate home with a physical structure or a place, it is much more than that. Ideally, it is where we feel safe, where we know we care about the people we’re with and they care about us, where we’re fed, where we find rest, where we feel ... loved. Those qualities, that feeling of home, is less dependent on human circumstances than we generally realize. It is knowing that we “dwell in the house of the Lord for ever,” as the 23rd Psalm describes it.

This sense of home takes on an additional dimension when God is considered as Love, as the Bible describes Him to be. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science and this news organization, renders the psalm this way: “I will dwell in the house [the consciousness] of [Love] for ever” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 578).

This spiritual sense of home is secure and eternal – and is present to comfort and sustain us even in the face of apparent danger, as another psalm points out. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.... Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalms 46:1-3, 10).

A loving God would not command us to be or do something we are incapable of being or doing. So this command to be still carries with it the assurance that we have God-given dominion to quiet thoughts of fear, anxiety, lack, and so on and turn to God, Love. To be conscious of His presence and power. To feel comforted, nourished, and safe. When we hear about people whose surroundings have been destroyed by hurricane, violence, or personal tragedy, we can work to realize and to help them realize that their eternal home of God’s love is also present even now as God’s love.

This is our right as God’s sons and daughters. This is our place in Love’s kingdom. When we hold that firmly in view, we feel that promised refuge more and more. Mrs. Eddy, quoting this psalm, writes: “Step by step will those who trust Him find that ‘God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble’ ” (Science and Health, p. 444).

Often, those steps are hastened by expressing love ourselves and looking for ways to help and heal others. Christ Jesus, for example, didn’t have a home of his own, but he certainly exuded the qualities of home – comfort, peace, the consciousness of love, and so on – in healing the multitudes.

A hymn by Rosemary Cobham in the “Christian Science Hymnal: Hymns 430-603” puts it this way: “We go to meet our neighbor’s need,/ And find our home in every place” (No. 443).

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Mark Sappenfield
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