Article August 7, 1989 Issue

Our own niche

If you don't know where you're going—or even where you want to go, sometimes the best thing to do is to find out who you really are!

Carol C. Lindsey

Something in human nature needs the assurance of belonging—of feeling that we have found our right place. But in this confusing world of top-speed competition it's often hard to know how we're going to find and establish ourselves. A constructive first step might be to come to an honest appraisal of who we really are and of what we can offer others as a result.

It's possible that some of us will be leaders, others will be followers. Some will initiate, others will be part of the support team. Yet as times change, so may our roles in the world. To develop a reliable base, then, we need to dig deeper than personal skills or education. We need to find out what our purpose or destiny is. And Christian Science provides firm guidance in this area.

Mrs. Eddy writes, "Each individual must fill his own niche in time and eternity."^{Retrospection and Introspection, p. 70.} For years I read this statement as if the words "in time" were not there. By doing so I was failing to see the redemptive link between divinity and the human scene. God's law upholds each individual in his real spiritual being—in divine Mind as Mind's idea. Man is therefore always employed as the expression of God's nature—of His intelligence, wisdom, joy, love, health, purity, and so on.