Article April 15, 1996 Issue

A place of refuge from worry and hopelessness

Richard Amand Hogrefe

I Used to be a world-class worrier. Life, to me, was filled with things to lose sleep over. As a teenager, I came across Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. It was like catching hold of a life raft to carry me over troubled waters. As I studied this book, I knew for the first time what it meant to be free of fear through trust in God as Christ Jesus taught. In the Science of Christ, I was learning of God and of my true selfhood as His child, and so discovering a sanctuary of safety and peace. I knew what the Psalmist meant when he sang: "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust" (Ps. 91:1, 2).

Christian Science inspires trust and confidence in God by bringing to light the fact that God is the one divine Mind, who is All-in-all. The realization that all is Mind and that creation dwells in Mind begins immediately to change the basis of one's thought and perception. And as Mary Baker Eddy points out in Science and Health, it is the ingrained mortal outlook that must be corrected: "Mortal man has made a covenant with his eyes to belittle Deity with human conceptions. In league with material sense, mortals take limited views of all things. That God is corporeal or material, no man should affirm" (p. 255).

As we understand that God is not corporeal, but is infinite Mind, Spirit, we begin to sense the reality of His presence and the fact that we actually can never be outside of Mind. To become conscious of this presence is to be awake to the power that heals and saves. It is the ever-presence of God that destroys the mortal concepts of existence, including feelings of isolation, danger, and hopelessness. We become aware of the presence of God through spiritual sense. Spiritual sense acquaints us with the power of God and not only corrects our limited view of things but reveals Mind's authority and law as intact.

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