Article August 11, 1997 ISSUE

Home furnishings

Colleen Feldmann Douglass

IT'S tempting to believe that the bricks and mortar that constitute a house are the substance of home. But the material components of a house have little to do with what home truly is. We can be at home anywhere in the world, for it's the heavenly structure of our thinking, not merely an ideal floor plan, that constitutes a perfect home.

We are at home when our consciousness is filled with tenderness, joy, beauty, and forgiveness, which bring comfort, warmth, and security. These don't come from a physical location but are within our thought, and they enable us to reflect our Maker without any encumbrances. The Psalmist describes this pure state of thought as "the secret place of the most High" (Ps. 91:1). This home-consciousness is an awareness of our oneness with God. And since it is not a physical place, it cannot be lost, swept away in a storm, shaken apart, or burned to the ground. Home is eternal yet ever new, always developing as our spiritual understanding of it grows.

Christ Jesus knew that for home, individuality, and even life itself, to have stability, they must be built upon the rock of Truth, or God. In a parable, he explained that a foundationless house—one built on the sand—would fall in a flood. But a house built on a rock would stand strong. As the Gospel of Luke records, "When the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock" (6:48). We might think of that rock as the substance of solid thinking that emanates from infinite Truth. And when we build our home on this rock-solid basis, nothing can shake it.

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