Article October 31, 1988 Issue

Why, I can love the world!

Being alone ... a frightening circumstance? Or is it an opportunity to prove that divine Love's abundant presence removes loneliness?

Fabian Craig-Wilson

I'd always been one of those people who seemed to need someone to love and care for, and there had always been someone needing my particular brand of loving. But with the passing of both my grandmother and my mother in the same year, I suddenly found myself alone. I was scared, and I was lonely. Who was I to love and care for now?

One night, full of self-pity, I sat outside, looking up at the stars, thinking, "I have no one to love now." But just as quickly followed a surprising answer, "Why, I can love the world!" It just popped out. Instead of continuing to be overwhelmed with self-pity, I began to think more deeply about loving the world. The gloom was gone in the contemplation of that simple thought.

But doesn't the Bible say, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world"?^{I John 2:15.} I realized it wasn't the mortal, material world that my thought had encompassed. It was the actual, spiritual reality of all existence. I was to love what is really true of the world, not the worldly ways and material systems the Bible verse cautions against. Didn't Christ Jesus urge, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness"?^{Matt. 6:33.} The world I was to love in my thought, to hold precious and to cherish, was the kingdom of God, Spirit, and the ideas that people it. By holding to this correct view of the world, I was filling my consciousness with man's genuine, spiritual identity, and the actuality of a spiritual, perfect, and eternal universe.