Article April 23, 1932 Issue

[Written Especially for Young People]

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IRMA DECKER

A Young girl, a student of Christian Science, was making plans for a year away at school. This would involve a long journey, and the possibility of not returning home or seeing the loved ones for the entire school year. One night, a few weeks before the time set for leaving, she awakened with a desperate sense of homesickness and the feeling that she would be forced to give up the year at school because of her inability to meet it. Having always attended the Christian Science Sunday School, she had learned to work out her problems in the Christian Science way. She had learned to turn to God first; so in the darkest hours of the night she listened for His voice, for she knew that "he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways;" and truly "the Gabriel of His presence" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 567) delivered her from the depths.

She recalled that friends had said, You will be homesick for a few days or weeks, but you will get over it; and then she reasoned: Homesickness is not more real than any other sickness, and one would not consent to a headache. One would expect to get over it. Why, then, consent to homesickness for a month, a day, or even an hour? Home is one's consciousness; and one's consciousness being in and of God, one's home is also in and of God. God being everywhere present, home is everywhere present; and there can therefore be no separation from God or God's ideas. Does time or space either bring homesickness or heal it? No, for she had experienced just as great a sense of it in her own home, in her own room, as though she were a thousand miles away. This again proved that, like all other sickness, homesickness is a mental condition. Therefore, time or place cannot interfere with the freedom within one's own illumined thought here and now.

And what of mother and father? God is Father-Mother, so there need be no aching void, no lack of power and strength, nor tender care. Before morning came this young girl was quielty and peacefully resting in "the ever-presence of ministering Love" (Science and Health, p. 567). There was no more fear of separation or of loneliness; and the coming months proved to be joyous, happy, and filled with usefulness and activity.

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April 23, 1932
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