Article August 29, 1983 Issue

Protecting where we live

FRANCES SMART ENGEL

A thief entered several houses in our mountain community—including mine—and took a television set from each. This was a warning to me. Having planned a five-month absence, I decided to pray daily for the protection of my home, before and after I left.

Could I be several thousand miles away and still realize this protection through prayer? Yes. When Christ Jesus, our Master, was at Cana, he healed a boy at Capernaum. Distance was no obstacle in the Master's healing work!^{See John 4:46–53 .} Healing dishonesty and callous lack of respect for others' rights is not very different, after all, from healing a sick child. Without praying directly for the thief, I could see the great fact that God is the only real power in His universe. As I prayed, our Leader's words came to mind. Mrs. Eddy writes: "Mortals can know a stone as substance, only by first admitting that it is substantial. Take away the mortal sense of substance, and the stone itself would disappear, only to reappear in the spiritual sense thereof." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 27–28.}

I could see that a preoccupation with material things—to have or to lose—existed only within the mortal sense of substance, and that I needed to see the nothingness of matter as either fact or substance. Conscious of the reality of spiritual ideas, I could prove my home to be impervious to robbery or destruction. If I clung to the supposed reality of material house and furnishings, I would be leaving room for a rip-off artist to rob me.

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