Article October 14, 1985 Issue

Learning "to be love"

KERRY M. KNOBELSDORFF

Christ Jesus, the master Christian, loved! In the midst of betrayal, torture, and the agony of the crucifixion, he loved. He was love. Every Christian yearns to love like this, to be love. But how? Our early, earnest efforts are often misdirected. Ruptured relationships and unhappy situations may leave us feeling empty, bereft of love. So we make an honest effort to stop criticizing, become more tolerant, more patient, more compassionate. These dedicated attempts to love are exercises in grace, but our understanding of love must rise even higher in order to heal the sick and sinning.

In a class she was teaching on Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy once asked the students what was the best way to bring about an instantaneous healing. As Irving C. Tomlinson recalls: "There were many answers, but when they had finished, she said that it is to love, to be love and to live love. There is nothing but Love. Love is the secret of all healing, the love which forgets self and dwells in the secret place, in the realm of the real. But it is not mere human love that heals, she pointed out, not a love for a person nor for anything—it is Love itself. The realization of this love for a moment will heal the sick or raise the dead."^{Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1966), pp. 90–91.}

Our study of Christian Science shows us that Love is God Himself and that Love's idea, man, is the very expression of Love. How, then, could the image and likeness of Love not know love, not express loveliness? Man, the emanation of Love, must love, must be love, all the time, all of eternity, and this fact is true no matter what the human circumstance seems to be reporting.

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