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A quick and harmonious house sale
My mother-in-law passed on this past spring, and it fell to my husband and me to sell her home. Her home was in a part of Arkansas where it commonly takes two to three years to sell a home. In fact, a real estate agent showed us statistics on five “recently” sold houses; the one that had sold most quickly had taken nearly three years to sell.
I felt keenly that it was important that the house be useful. It was a home that had been built with love, filled with love for many years, and its purpose was clear: to bless. I knew there was a spiritual basis for the idea of home, and that qualities such as purpose and harmony are permanent because they come from God.
Recalling a permanent healing I’d had of jet lag when traveling was valuable. That experience had helped me see that God, not the position of the sun, governed my well-being. I reasoned that right activity could not possibly be dependent on how many times the earth had circled the sun. The movement of the earth around the sun—a year—did not make sense as a measure of God’s love for me and my family.
It came to me that our approach to the sale should be guided by the commandment, “Honour thy father and thy mother” (Exodus 20:12). God is the Father-Mother of each of us, including those associated with this sale. We could honor God by turning to Him and trusting harmony to Him in this situation.
God as All allows no room for a source of fear, confusion, or doubt.
In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes, “God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love” (p. 465). I prayed to better understand the qualities of God as Mind, who guides us. As God’s children, our real identity is the spiritual reflection of Him, Mind. Understanding this, we can each naturally express—in our own individual way—clarity, wisdom, and insight. God as All allows no room for a source of fear, confusion, or doubt. Mind includes only right direction. I thought of how Christ Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple to keep it pure (see Matthew 21:12, 13), and I saw that the Christ, spiritual Truth, purifies our thought. I could be receptive to the Christ and trust God completely. With confidence, I thanked God.
Praying in this way, we were led to list the house with a real estate agent who, to some, may have seemed like an odd choice. He was not the agent who had sold the most homes recently, nor was he the one most familiar with the community. However, he expressed a love for the home, a quiet confidence, and a sense of order that reminded me that Principle, God, is fully in charge of His spiritual universe. We were grateful for the “still small voice” (I Kings 19:12) guiding us.
We were also led to just the right steps in pricing the house. Three real estate agents we’d interviewed had suggested wildly different selling prices. Because so few houses were being sold and the house was unusual, there were no real comparables. I turned to God, declaring prayerfully that there was a right answer, one that would honor our Father-Mother through the demonstration of harmony.
Almost immediately, an idea for establishing the price came. Within days, there was interest in the house; within three weeks, there was an offer on the house; and we closed on the sale two months after it was listed. We sold the house at a price higher than the other real estate agents had suggested as a listing price.
The belief that time can limit right activity did not succeed in imposing false constraints on us. The house’s usefulness was gloriously seen, and we felt as if we had been good stewards, honoring my husband’s parents, but more importantly, honoring our Father-Mother God, and turning to Him, the one Mind, for guidance.