Editorial December 11, 2000 Issue

Nothing too far away from Love

Heloísa Rivas

Can any situation be too far away from God? Some years ago I had the opportunity to see that it cannot. I became very sure that nothing in the whole world was beyond the palpable presence of the love of God.

My mother, who lived in Brazil, had called me in Boston in great distress. She had been in bed for a week with a severe flu—feverish, lonely, sad. My first impulse was to go and take care of her, but that was beyond what I could do at that time. I agonized between my sense of duty toward her and my commitments at home and at work.

Looking for solace, I remembered this line of a hymn called Consolator, the Latin word for Comforter: "Earth has no sorrow that Love cannot cure" (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 40). What a relief? This told me that God's love is so spiritually concrete and pervasive that it knew no distance, had no spaces within its own being, in the whole world. My acknowledgment of that fact was like an irresistible healing agent. A couple of hours later my mother was completely recovered. Although I was prepared to travel to her, there was no need