My goal in prayer for 2021 is to stay more consistently aware of my true, spiritual home in God. This is something I began to think about when I read Hymn 497 from the Christian Science Hymnal: Hymns 430–603. The hymn begins, “Home is the consciousness of good” (Rosemary C. Cobham). This is based on an idea shared by Mary Baker Eddy in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, in which she includes the twenty-third Psalm, substituting, as she puts it, “for the corporeal sense, the incorporeal or spiritual sense of Deity.” The passage ends with “. . . I will dwell in the house [the consciousness] of [LOVE] for ever” (p. 578). 

These ideas show me that our right place, our home, is a consciousness filled with goodness and love. They tell me that I can be in my home all the time, regardless of what is happening around me, because my right place is a state of mind reflecting the divine Mind, or God, where thought is filled with love. Going into the new year, I look forward to being in my right place by holding on to good and loving thoughts. I know that I never need to leave those thoughts, which means I never need to leave my home either. With goodness and love held closely in consciousness, you and I and everyone can, as the hymn quoted earlier concludes, “find our home in every place.”

Conrad Heath 
Dorchester, Massachusetts, US