Article July 3, 2000 Issue

Always connected

You're never far away from love.

By Cynthia N. Beavers

My grandmother had a favorite saying that she always repeated when we were parting. She would give me a hug and whisper in my ear, "God goes with you and stays with me." It was comforting to know that since God was with both of us, we could never really be separated. Her words helped me feel secure and loved when I went 1,500 miles away to college. They reminded me that, in one sense, my family was as close as God.

In the Bible the Psalmist says, "Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations" (Ps. 90:1). To me, this means that God is not just my dwelling place but our dwelling place—a spiritual state of thought where, in actuality, we all dwell together forever. So even in my dormitory room, I could dwell in God, where my family also dwelt.

Now that I'm a mother with two adult children who have families of their own, I have whispered my grandmother's words in their ears, and my daughter has whispered them in mine. One day I discovered this sentence by Mary Baker Eddy that supports this sense of everyone dwelling together in God: "Where God is we can meet, and where God is we can never part" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 131). When I read this, I thought of my grandmother's words—words that helped me when my son was on a six-month hike on the Appalachian Trail. When I thought of him out there alone in the woods, I realized that God was with both of us at the same moment. I also think about that saying when my daughter is scuba diving in the depths of some ocean. It reminds me that she and I—and God—can never really be parted.

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