Article December 21, 1987 Issue

Our "feast days"

Feelings of emptiness and distance aren't inevitable if we're alone for the holidays. God promises us abundance.

Linda Staudt Black

Another holiday without my family! I was not looking forward to it—especially because it was Christmas. Ever since moving away from home I had had times of loneliness and separation, and now, with this busy season seeming to exaggerate the closeness of families, I felt even more at a loss. Everywhere I turned I saw people happily involved in family activities.

I knew that I could call up friends and stay with them, but I also knew that more was needed than to soothe the pangs of loneliness with social activities, even if they were done with the best of friends. What would I do after the visit was over? How would I feel when I was alone again?

When I had needed healing at other times, I had turned to Christian Science and been healed, so I decided it was high time to do so now. I soon found comfort in a passage from a letter by the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, to a branch Church of Christ, Scientist: "Your feast days will not be in commemoration, but in recognition of His presence; your ark of the covenant will not be brought out of the city of David, but out of 'the secret place of the most High,' whereof the Psalmist sang, even the omniscience of omnipotence; your tabernacle of the congregation will not be temporary, but a 'house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens;' your oracle, under the wings of the cherubim, is Truth's evangel, enunciating, 'God is Love.' " ^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 188.}

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