Finding a home
Originally published in the March 15, 1978 issue of The Christian Science Monitor
A small boy was being pitied because he and his family were living in a hotel. He replied, “Oh, but we do have a home. It's just that we haven't anywhere to put it at the moment.”
That little boy may have felt instinctively at least some of the wonderful truth that man's real home is not a material structure but ever-present, divine Love—God. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, writes in her textbook Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Pilgrim on earth, thy home is heaven; stranger, thou art the guest of God.” Science and Health, p. 254
At one time Christ Jesus, having been told his mother and brothers were waiting to speak with him, responded with the searching questions, “Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?” Matt. 12:48 The Master's message to humanity was based on the important revelation that there is one divine creator, God, and that all His sons and daughters are included in His love and are united in one happy family. What he was rejecting were the limitations of the human sense of home and family. He wished his listeners to see, as he did, the eternal brotherhood of man, each individual in his true selfhood, governed by God's law of perfection, and reflecting the qualities of the one divine Mind. In answer to his own question Jesus went on, “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” v. 50
Since God, the universal Father, is divine Love, all God's children reflect Love. The spiritual attributes of Deity belong to His idea, man, and these attributes are available to us at all times and in all situations. When we recognize our true identity as spiritual offspring of God and claim for ourselves the inheritance of His qualities, we prove that we have them in abundance.
God being omnipresent, there is no place where love, safety, companionship, strength, and assurance are not. In proportion as each one of us recognizes that these qualities are part of the eternal, unchangeable nature of God and man, and we reach out in prayer to the Father to claim their blessing for ourselves, we bring them into our lives. This is the law of divine Love that Christian Science teaches.
Mortals often set a high value on a permanent sense of home. They sometimes make great sacrifices to build or buy a house in which to live and establish a family. But what they are really seeking in material buildings is that which does not exist in and is not dependent on any human structure. It is the qualities of God Himself, divine Love, that, consciously or unconsciously, they are craving for, and Mrs. Eddy states assuringly, “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.” Science and Health, p. 494
When God, divine Love, meets our need, we are completely satisfied and know with certainty that we can never lose what we have gained. As the Bible says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." James 1:17
I have always remembered most gratefully the confident statement about home made by the little boy in the hotel. The thought sustained me over a long period when business commitments prevented me from having an established material home. It brought into my life the glow of home in its true spiritual sense wherever I happened to be—in hotel rooms and even airport lounges. Everyone has God's gift of the qualities of home in consciousness and everyone can experience it.