Article November 27, 1989 Issue

Finding our home in God

When travelers find a cabin for the night, they also learn a lesson about the real nature of man's dwelling place.

Hugh Clarke

When one is looking for either temporary or permanent housing, it's helpful to keep in thought the basic spiritual fact that man, the image and likeness of God, has his real being in God. The Scriptures bring this out, in both the Old and New Testaments. Probably the most quoted of these is the Apostle Paul's declaration "In him we live, and move, and have our being."^{Acts 17:28.} Centuries before this, the Psalmist noted, "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations."^{Ps. 90:1.}

There are a number of other references that depict God as our "refuge," our "habitation." In this spiritual abode, the prophet Isaiah says, "A man shall be as an hiding place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land."^{Isa. 32:2.}

Once having acknowledged that man is the image of God, we can see the spiritual logic of the truth that our true dwelling place is always in Spirit, and the nonlogic of looking to physical structures as the real need. Having a constant relationship with God, man can never actually be absent from his home. As an idea in God, the divine Mind, home is already prepared, always available. In its highest concept it is the kingdom of heaven—peace, harmony, happiness, and well-being—all within us now. As one of the hymns in the Christian Science Hymnal states, "Pilgrim on earth, home and heaven are within thee."^{Hymnal, No. 278.}