How often it seems that children, husband or wife, home, friends, church, and perhaps some cherished activity, form our tight, secure little world! They comprise a small sphere of activity we think of as our life—our earthly all. Very gradually sometimes, occasionally very quickly, the human picture changes. Children leave home for school, career, or marriage. They feel quite capable and need no help. Friends move or retire to another location. What has happened to that world we knew and felt so comfortable in? Have our security and happiness left us?

The best time to begin to know where our security, peace, and happiness actually lie is before the changes occur. We can begin at once to do what Mrs. Eddy points us to in Science and Health: "The time for the reappearing of the divine healing is throughout all time; and whosoever layeth his earthly all on the altar of divine Science, drinketh of Christ's cup now, and is endued with the spirit and power of Christian healing." ^{Science and Health, p. 55;}

Should this process be painful? It could be illustrated by the familiar story of Abraham, who felt impelled to lay his dearly loved son, Isaac, upon an altar as a sacrifice to God. But God's angel or message came to Abraham saying, "Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him." ^{Gen. 22:12;} Couldn't we view the sacrifice required of Abraham as the giving up of his adoration of Isaac as a human personality, not the killing of him? He must see Isaac's true individuality as God's son.

Such a sacrifice in our own lives need not be painful. It can bring increased spiritual understanding and joy. Learning to let go of a personal sense of anybody, including oneself, does not mean we must lose our children or any of those close to us. Only a false concept of them must be laid "on the altar of divine Science."

We need to put aside selfish human yearning for our children and see them as governed by God's wisdom, as under His care and protection—see them as spiritual ideas, not as mortals tied by blood to us and with characters determined by genes and chromosomes inherited from us. As we do this, a false sense of responsibility disappears. We can see our children as loved and protected by God. Even though they may not consciously recognize it, the law of God always encompasses them and works in their behalf. Each of them is needed as an individual expression of the allness of God. He could not be deprived of them as His manifestation for an instant. Our children cannot go off in a little orbit of their own apart from divine Principle and Love.

Who is the one I call my husband or wife? Just a flesh and blood mortal? No. He or she is an individual expression—in a way that fills our mutual need—of God's love, support, and tender communication.

Home, spiritually viewed, is not a material environment. It is a state of consciousness where man is safe, secure, at peace. Putting home on the altar of divine Science involves translating everything about it into a spiritual concept in the keeping of divine Principle and Love.

Again, our busyness in church organization is no guarantee that we understand Church, the divine idea, and are living it in the daily expression of Principle and Love. So we must lay our human concept of church, too, upon the altar in order to really see what the spiritual idea of it is, and to live it. What we lay down is the concept of church as merely a material building or a human undertaking organized by people expressing love in a limited, human way. Church, truly understood, is not human but divine, not a material structure but completely spiritual. As we hold to this view, our church will be seen functioning harmoniously in the community and healing the sick.

And how important to lay our limited concept of supply on Love's altar, to put down unhealthy ambition or too personal trust in a human employer or business colleagues, to see business and supply as they really are—God's demand that we manifest Him, our only employer, our always-reliable source of supply. God has given us everything we need, infinitely, abundantly. There can never be a lessening of this spiritual flow of good, for our Father is immutable in His love for His own idea.

Mrs. Eddy says, "The question oft presents itself, Are we willing to sacrifice self for the Cause of Christ, willing to bare our bosom to the blade and lay ourselves upon the altar?" ^{Message to The Mother Church for 1901, p. 35.} Laying the sense of our own human selfhood on the altar seems the most difficult thing to do. But in Christian Science one learns that identity is spiritual, not material. The real me or you is the spiritual reflection of the divine I or Ego. This is the only man there really is or can be.

Are we willing to lay our "earthly all on the altar of divine Science"? Then we need to trust in God's power and goodness and allness. To give everything we have into His keeping, for all the good we have is from Him. To translate the human seeming into the spiritual reality of abundant good, unchanging Love, unending Life.