Nothing is closer than divine Love

Richard C. Bergenheim

How do we think of our relationship to God? Is it a long distance "please leave your message after the beep" affair? Or is it intimate, a truly conscious sense of God with us always? This is the sense of the Father that Christ Jesus worked to bring to us.

Yet for many people life seems to have more in common with the sad story of Adam and Eve than with the history of Jesus. Adam's life starts with aloneness. Even though the Lord God created all the animals and birds and though Adam gave them all names, he still had no human companion. Then the Lord God created a woman out of his rib. But neither Adam nor Eve felt complete. (Otherwise, how could they have been tricked by a serpent's empty promises?)

How different from the way Christ Jesus thought! He was always conscious of God's presence. One of the Bible names for the Messiah, Immanuel, means "God with us." Jesus taught, "He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him."^{John 8:29.} Jesus is our Way-shower, teaching us how to live. Then, shouldn't we know and declare also that the Father has not left us alone? The Christ, the divine idea of Love that Jesus so fully presented, saves us from following the life pattern of Adam and Eve. The Christ gives us a wholly new approach to life.