Article November 29, 1982 Issue

Where does your hope rest?

LYNNE RANDOLPH

Have you ever pinned your hopes to one thing, felt that if you obtained only this one thing, your problems would be over and you would be permanently happy?

Haven't we all! Whatever that cherished object may be—a job, a home, a healing, a person—the longing for it needs to be replaced with a sense of divine Love's ever-presence if we are to be truly satisfied. Longings can lead to fulfillment and joy if a desire for the object itself is replaced by a deeper understanding of what the object represents. That job we so desire, for example, may actually represent our desire for interesting, purposeful, and rewarding activity; a healing, our desire for wholeness and dominion; a person, our desire for tender comfort, completeness, and satisfaction.

Christian Science teaches that man and the universe are spiritual, eternal, perfect. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul."^{Science and Health, p. 269.} When we gain a purer understanding of the tangibility of spiritual ideas, we will no longer be in turmoil if a particular object is not present to the physical senses, because we will be enjoying the presence of the spiritual good we've learned to recognize. And this spiritual consciousness of present good may well be evidenced in what we need—and more than we even dreamed we needed—appearing humanly. After all, Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."^{John 10:10.}