Article May 3, 1947 Issue

"How lovely are Thy dwellings"

MAX DUNAWAY

"How lovely are Thy dwelling, O Lord of Hosts!" These words from a solo sung in a Christian Science church floated melodiously down to the congregation. To one student, a returned veteran, they were hallowed with inspiration, for he had sought in vain for an adequate dwelling so that his wife in a distant city might join him. Recognizing the words of the solo as taken from one of the Psalms, he searched out the Scripture after the church service was over. The eighty-fourth Psalm rewarded his search.

"How amiable are thy tabernacles, O Lord of hosts!" it read. "My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the Lord." The courts of the Lord! There could be nothing limited about such a dwelling place as this, thought the student. And because of God's impartial and universal love those courts, or royal residences, must be available to all who desire to enter them. The Giver of infinite good could no more withhold a habitation from His expression, man, than the sun could send forth a beam of sunlight and then disconnect it from its source. As the sunbeam inheres in the sun, so man is established in divine Principle, God.

The student read on: "Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King, and my God." Yes, even the birds of the air had been provided with dwelling places; and did not the Master assure his followers that they were of more value than many sparrows? What was this house, this nest of refuge? Why, "even thine altars, O Lord of hosts"—even the consciousness of ever-present Love. Here was something more enduring than houses built of wood and stone, even a perpetual dwelling wherein God's ideas continually abide. "Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee," declared the Psalm, and indeed the dweller in such an exalted habitation could not cease for a moment to be aware of God's blessings.

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