Article November 21, 2005 Issue

'In my Father's house'—what home means to me

By Kenny Simmons

LATELY, when I think of home, I consider the story of the prodigal son in Luke's Gospel (see 15:11-32). After he'd gone through the sharp experience of wasting all he had on "riotous living," and found himself in a deprived condition—the sad human concept of life with all its lack and limitation—the idea of home came to him right where he was. Thoughts of repentance came to him, along with the desire for something better—the comforts of being at home with his father. I think he longed for a peace of mind that only being at home could bring.

I remember being in the back seat of my broken-down car in a dilapidated garage, trying to get high on drugs. I began to cry. I, too, longed for something better. It was a moment of fervent desire for righteousness. Little did I realize it, but right then and there I was feeling the desire to go home—a desire to be with my Father, with God. That was the angel message that led me, and I discovered my way home the day I walked into a Christian Science Reading Room and began to find the truth about God and myself.

The truth that Christian Science supplied lifted me up out of thinking of life as something that could be both good and evil, that it could be either abundant or limited. I learned that that's a form of dualism, and as the book of James says, "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways" (1:8). I've come to understand that good is the sole reality, and that there is no destructive force opposing the good that God creates. As someone who had only known the doomsday message of hell and brimstone being man's inevitable fate, the realness of God—His oneness and goodness and love for all His creation—was a revelation that truly has saved me.

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