Article March 8, 1919 Issue

"Our Father-Mother God"

LILIAN E. FALES

Through all my childhood there was a great sense of loss, because I had not even the memory of a mother's love. Much of this was caused by the thought of others. Even the love of a kind father did not take the place of mother love, and at times this sense of loss was so overpowering that it seemed as if I could not be happy. A sense of loneliness and the lack of an understanding of love continued all through young womanhood, until Christian Science was found. One day, in thinking gratefully of our dear Leader and her work for mankind, there came to me some realization of the mother love she was reflecting to humanity, and with this realization I lost entirely and for all time the sense of motherlessness.

It may be partly because of this seeming lack that the thought of God as Mother as well as Father has been so dear to me. What have we to fear, even at a time when error is doing its utmost, if we turn to that Mother love for refuge? Our best sense of human motherhood is very far from spiritual reality, but we know that the human mother gives more as the child is in greater need. We should turn with all our hearts to our Father-Mother God, to the unchanging, everlasting tenderness and patience which blesses and enlarges even the smallest right desire, and not be prevented by the falsities of fear and doubt from rejoicing that we are God's children. Much of the joy of children depends upon the goodness and happiness of their parents. Can we possibly think of God as unhappy or burdened? Yet would He not be so if unhappiness were a reality?

Christian Scientists realize that it is their right to reflect joy, the joy which is of God, which no man or circumstance can take away. The Bible says, "Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous." As we gain a clearer understanding of the distance between true righteousness and self-righteousness we can surely rejoice in our Father-Mother God and in the righteous, or right idea, God's reflection. The realization of the motherhood of Love takes nothing away from our happiness in and reliance upon God's fatherhood, but instead it gives to each one a clearer sense of God as the great "I am," the Almighty.

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