Our home in divine Love

I’m a resident of Houston, Texas, one of the cities chosen to receive people from the Gulf Coast who need temporary shelter following Hurricane Katrina. I’ve been volunteering to help them when they arrive. It has been a wonderful opportunity to welcome them to our city. In addition to expressing neighborly love toward them, I’ve also been trying really hard to bring a spiritual basis to my work.

It would be easy to see these individuals as needy victims of tragedy. But that would only reinforce the widespread feeling that they are all “down and out.” So I’ve tried to think of them with the love God has for every individual.

When one of the other volunteers I was working with called the people from Louisiana “refugees,” I told him that I like to think of them as friends and visitors. This keeps me thinking of them as they truly are—as spiritual, loved by God and inseparable from Him. This outlook helps me make sure I treat them as honored guests, instead of intruders.

Everyone, no matter what his or her circumstances, is God’s child, and can never be outside of God’s care. Being God’s child automatically makes us loved because God is Love and He is everywhere. Thinking this way gives me a good perspective on the people I meet because there’s no reason to judge them against some kind of personal standard. Nor do I need to compare myself to them. We’re all equal in God’s loving sight.

At the supermarket—after our visitors from Louisiana began to arrive—I had an experience that reinforced my conviction that God loves everyone. Based on the number of cars in the parking lot, I knew the store would be packed. And it was! The people who had been evacuated were shopping, and so the store had many more than its usual number of customers. When stores are busy like this, sometimes shoppers become impatient or frustrated, and I really didn’t want that to happen because these people had already been through so much.

I felt I could make a contribution to the harmony of the place by praying while I was shopping. I kept my thought filled with the idea that everyone around me was God’s loving, patient, cared-for child, and that’s how I saw them. One of the clerks commented that it was like the Christmas rush, but all I experienced was calm and joy because I kept praying, embracing these dear people and myself in God’s love.

I had the opportunity to help some of our visitors from Louisiana find items and to greet them with a loving “so glad you are with us.” And I meant it, too.

Someone I was talking with referred to our visitors from Louisiana as being displaced, but I can’t think of them that way. I feel God has placed them here because He has a purpose for them. We may not know what that purpose is for each and every one of those individuals, but they are never “displaced” from God’s care.

Since man—both men and women—exists to express God, then our visitors can express God just as well here as they did when they were at home. Nothing can put them outside of God or separate them from the purpose God has for them.

One man I was working with was distressed that the people from Louisiana had lost their homes. I thought about how, in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Home is the dearest spot on earth, and it should be the center, though not the boundary of the affections.” I shared with my co-worker the idea that the center of one’s affections isn’t really a material place. It’s what’s in one’s heart and thoughts.

When you think about home that way, it’s easier to see that it’s impossible to lose it, whether someone’s “spot on earth” is a cot in a shelter or a room in someone else’s house. Home is a quality of thought. There must be love for a place to be home. It is a spot you cherish returning to time after time. For me, home means shelter, safety and warmth, my dear family and my precious cat.

The more I keep my thoughts about home—or any other need—pure and spiritual, the more I gain ground spiritually. And the conviction that God is ever-present makes such a difference. I love something Mary Baker Eddy wrote in a poem that is now a hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal: “Fear no ill,— since God is good, and loss is gain” (No. 207 ).

Spiritual thinking is powerful. It brings healing. That is why I count on divine Love. It is with me every step I take throughout my days, and really, through everyone’s day. Even in the midst of trouble, divine Love is there to bring each of us comfort, peace and joy.

Greater works:

Science and Health
58:21

King James Bible
John 14:12