Article March 23, 1974 Issue

Taking Home with You

ELIZABETH BICE LUERSSEN

The Psalmist gives the spiritually true answer for everyone: "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations."^{Ps. 90:1;} God is man's home. This healing truth connotes that the highest concept of home or environment includes the orderliness of Principle, the beauty of Soul, the substance of Spirit, and the activity of Life. There are no trouble areas or bad neighborhoods in God's kingdom. Love permeates and Truth protects our real environment, and divine Mind provides harmonious ideas as its inhabitants. The spiritual understanding of environment or home as the power of good, the comfort of love, the consciousness of God's presence, imparts a sure sense of security. I learned something of this as a young girl on my first summer job away from home. I had been hired as reporter on a small town newspaper, and was to have room and board at the editor's home because there were no hotels in the area.

Upon arrival I was dismayed to learn that I was to share a room with two daughters of the family. They were not Christian Scientists, and I felt like a stranger in an alien land. During the night I was stricken with influenza and literally had to go into a closet to study and pray—the only place where I could have any privacy and not disturb my roommates. Lonely, miserable, and frightened by the physical challenge facing me, I opened my copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, and read this passage: "God never endowed matter with power to disable Life or to chill harmony with a long and cold night of discord."^{Science and Health, p. 378;}

Almost instantly I felt the loving sense of God's presence surrounding me. I felt warmed, comforted, at peace, and at home. Every symptom of the disease vanished, and I went back to bed healed and joyous. That summer a delightful friendship ripened between the family members and me. Two of them turned to Christian Science for healing. A warm and friendly contact was maintained for many years, and I still think of that small town with the affection one associates with a hometown.

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