Article April 20, 2015 Issue

Forever safe in God

Liz Butterfield Wallingford

Throughout the Bible, there are assurances and proofs of our inseparability from God and His help. For instance, in Deuteronomy, we read, “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (33:27). There’s no “sometimes” or “except for when God isn’t with you” in there. And like God Himself, this heartening promise is “eternal,” “everlasting.” As Christ Jesus and others demonstrated, no matter what the circumstances, we can trust in God’s ever-present care and protection, because God and man are never separated.

So there’s a biblical foundation for understanding the notion that we could ever exist apart from God to be nothing more than a false belief. “Let us rid ourselves of the belief that man is separated from God, and obey only the divine Principle, Life and Love,” urges Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 91). This can seem like a tall order, especially when we find ourselves amid circumstances that seem scary and dangerous—for instance, extreme weather events that we might encounter. But we can trust in the promise of our inherent and unceasing oneness with God. And as we do, as we work to “rid ourselves of” any belief that we could ever be apart from Him, this enables us to demonstrate God’s unfailing protection of His children, even in the face of extreme weather.

Science and Health explains, “Spiritual man is the image or idea of God, an idea which cannot be lost nor separated from its divine Principle” (p. 303). As the spiritual idea of God, each of us is inseparable from God, Spirit. Divine Spirit hasn’t created us as material creatures any more than it creates or causes earthly weather. And because Spirit, God, is the only Mind, what Mind doesn’t create, or cause, or know, is not part of the true, spiritual universe or our true, spiritual identity as the expression of Spirit. Material circumstance cannot enter that spiritual universe or touch our real being.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

The substance of Christian Science nursing