Article May 6, 1996 Issue

Love never lost

Jonathan Heim

One day, while I was teaching Sunday School, my class and I discussed the different ways our parents express love toward us. First, the pupils mentioned shelter, care, and food, but soon we spoke of our Father-Mother God, and how our parents' love for us is—at its best—a reflection of the love God expresses toward His offspring.

I thought back a number of years when I had been faced with a series of challenges that shook my concept of where love comes from. I had grown up expecting always to have my parents around to offer their love, support, and guidance. Soon after I graduated from college, however, my mother suddenly passed on. My sense of the closeness of family was shaken, and a void seemed to appear where love had once been. I prayed to God in search of answers and asked another Christian Scientist to help me pray to resolve feelings of grief and loss of love.

A little over a year later, my father also passed on unexpectedly. During that time of spiritual study and prayer following my mother's passing, my relationship with my father had become much deeper. Greater mutual respect and understanding had developed as I had begun to see him as God's spiritual idea and not foremost as my father. Throughout this period a new understanding of parental love slowly developed as my relation to my Father-Mother God became clearer and closer through prayer.

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