Article May 15, 1926 Issue

Our Father-Mother God

TILLIE C. VAN DER VOORT

The quality of the love of human parents for their children gives an inkling of what divine Love must be. And to think of God as our Parent brings to human consciousness some understanding of the great tenderness of our Father-Mother God. Jesus emphasized the fatherhood of God and His providence for His creation. He tells us in his incomparable Sermon on the Mount, "Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him." Would any human father, worthy the name, anticipating his children's needs, fail to supply them, if he could see his way clearly to do so? Then may we not be quite sure that God, who includes in Himself all substance, has all man's needs provided, even before we ourselves become aware of them? Jesus asks, further, in the Sermon on the Mount, "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?"

Since it is a fact that all man's needs are provided by God, his all-wise loving Parent, why do we so often fail to recognize these blessings? On page 332 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy says, "Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation." Perhaps our failure to recognize the tender relationship of our Father-Mother God is due to the fact that we forget this relationship is between Him and His spiritual creation, and so are apt too earnestly to seek temporal blessings for a mortal selfhood. Instead of putting off this belief in a material selfhood, we strive to win for it the recognition and blessing which, the Bible assures us, God has provided for His children.

This striving to win for the mortal so-called selfhood the blessings and benefits which belong to God's spiritual ideas reminds the writer of a game she used to play in childhood. She was very fond of playing at make-believe, pretending she was a little girl in circumstances very different from her own. The make-believe little girl was poor and uncared for, an orphan living under the most distressing conditions. The writer would mentally forsake herself for the child of her imagination. Her warm, comfortable clothing became to her thought rags and tatters; her nourishing meals, a scanty crust; her warm bed and soft blankets, a heap of straw and a ragged coverlet; her home, a cold, unwholesome garret.

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