Learning that Life is eternal

Just before I turned 15, my brother, Richard (Dick), joined the army. This was in 1967 during the Vietnam War. When it seemed likely that he would be sent to Vietnam, my mother decided it was time for the family to go back to church. Until then, we hadn’t attended any church regularly, though I have vague recollections of attending a church at Easter and Christmas.

This time, my mom picked First Church of Christ, Scientist, the Christian Science church near us. She chose the Christian Science church for the simple reason that my grandmother’s cousin, who lived in another country, was a Christian Scientist and my mom liked her.

So Mom began attending Christian Science church services as I started in the Sunday School. I liked it right away. I was impressed with the way Christian Science explains how Jesus’ healings and teachings are relevant today and for all time. I remember having a Sunday School class about logic. We started with the premises from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy that God exists, God is All, and God is good. Then we came to the conclusion that all that really exists must be included in God and His creation, and that all must be good. From this it follows that evil (anything that is the opposite of God or not included in God) cannot really exist. 

In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes: “The Scriptures imply that God is All-in-all. From this it follows that nothing possesses reality nor existence except the divine Mind and His ideas. The Scriptures also declare that God is Spirit. Therefore in Spirit all is harmony, and there can be no discord; all is Life, and there is no death. Everything in God’s universe expresses Him” (p. 331). This opened my eyes to the possibility of understanding existence in a whole new way.

My brother was sent to Vietnam on January 1, 1968, and served during the Tet Offensive. On April 7, we were informed that Dick was missing in action. My parents immediately arranged for my older sister to return home from college. 

While my sister was in transit, soldiers came to the door. We guessed what they would tell us before they got out of their car. My brother had been killed. I was stunned. 

My parents and I picked up my sister from the airport but waited to tell her the news until we got her into our car and started home. She began to cry and declared, “Now I know there is no God!”

In that moment I was flooded with the knowledge that God does exist and God was right there with us because God is All. This recognition of God’s existence and presence was so strong that I still remember clearly every detail of that moment. I remember the streetlights passing the window, where we were on the road, and how my dad looked as he gripped the steering wheel.

That these spiritual truths came to me and rang true right then was proof to me of what I was learning in Sunday School. God, Life, is All. How can there be any death? If “everything in God’s universe expresses Him,” then my brother expresses God and that expression never ended. This understanding woke me out of feelings of loss and grief.      

Science and Health says, “One moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual understanding of Life and Love, is a foretaste of eternity” (p. 598). This is the kind of moment I had—a consciousness of Life and Love that showed me the eternal nature of my brother and of all of us! God’s existence was confirmed and proved to me in that moment, and I haven’t doubted it since. 

When we had weddings or new babies born into the family, I would sometimes think, “I wish my brother were here to see this,” but that sense of God’s presence is always there to comfort me and assure me that Life is eternal. Even when other family members or friends have passed on, I have looked back to this experience and known that God exists, God is All, and God is good.