Article December 15, 1997 Issue

Rediscovering our "first love"

Philip Joseph Noone

The feeling that love is missing from our lives can often give us an anxious and hopeless view of life. To feel this way is to experience a lack of connectedness, not just with others, even though this is so important, but with the very source of our being, namely God. For when this—our "first love," as the Bible puts it (Rev. 2:4)—appears missing, then all our other relationships can seem superficial and meaningless.

We don't have to feel this way. The solution lies in rediscovering and preserving our sense of unity with God. When our primary relationship with our Maker is clearly in view, we find it expressed in substantial and meaningful relationships with the rest of His creation. Jesus put it this way: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matt. 6:33).

How do we find our unity with God? Through Spiritual sense. In Science and Health Mary Baker Eddy writes: "Through spiritual sense you can discern the heart of divinity, and thus begin to comprehend in Science the generic term man. Man is not absorbed in Deity, and man cannot lose his individuality, for he reflects eternal Life; nor is he an isolated, solitary idea, for he represents infinite Mind, the sum of all substance" (pp. 258–259). When you really think about man's oneness with God, you can see how it must be a false sense—a material sense of things—that makes us feel alone and unloved. When we see ourselves and others as material personalities, rather than as reflections of God, we shut out the true sense of our life in God.

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