Article December 23, 1991 Issue

The gift of belonging

Our unity with God is a priceless gift, a practical truth.

Peter Aston

I can recall quite vividly the first Christmas I spent away from home. I was in a distant country with a few acquaintances but no family or friends. Our family get-togethers over the holiday period had always been such warm, loving occasions, and now here I was suddenly feeling "out in the cold!" But now I also had time to read. And as I read, I began to consider deeply the implications of Christmas and my relationship to God.

It is entirely possible that my study started from a point of self-pity, but it grew and I began to see the majesty of the accounts of Jesus' birth and its fulfillment of prophecy. I appreciated the remarkable receptivity of Mary to the message from God; the kindness, gentleness, and obedience of Joseph; and the true wisdom of the Magi. In her Miscellaneous Writings Mrs. Eddy observes: "As the Wisemen grew in the understanding of Christ, the spiritual idea, it grew in favor with them. Thus it will continue, as it shall become understood, until man be found in the actual likeness of his Maker."

I began to rejoice in the knowledge of my inseparability from God, for the unity of creator and creation is central to Christ Jesus' teachings. It became clear to me that, as God's spiritual likeness, His reflection, I could not be separated for an instant from Him. Understanding God as my Father-Mother, as my very source, healed thoughts of loneliness and of being removed from the warmth of family love. I found that I was beginning to understand Paul's declaration in his letter to the Romans that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

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