There are different kinds of closeness. We may get face-to-face close, for example, when sandwiched between people on an elevator or while crowding into a sports arena. Then there's the closeness that has nothing to do with being physically near someone, such as having a close friend or relative.

Still closer, however, is our relationship to God. How thrilling to discover that we can never be just a face in the crowd to Him, and that we're closer, unimaginably closer, than any human tie. Man is forever known and loved by God. And that's immensely important to understand.

What's indicated throughout the Bible is how well known we really are. In the book of Genesis, for example, we read that God saw His creation as "very good," as His image and likeness. Right through the accounts of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and others, the evidence is vivid that God is not a detached or inattentive deity. Rather, He is always with us; He speaks to us, guides us, and cares for us. As the Bible indicates, God's presence can be felt and His help sought just as naturally as someone would seek help from his mom or dad or a close friend.

Christ Jesus' teachings shed the most light on this nearness—better yet, oneness—which exists between God and His offspring. No single statement has stirred us and taught us more about this, perhaps, than his words "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30).

Think of the significance of realizing what man is to God. How deeply and wonderfully we are changed when we learn of God's nature as pure Spirit, as boundless Love, and realize that man is actually His image. It's this eternal image, sustained by God, that He knows and cherishes. This image isn't a little mortal. God's man couldn't be a fleshly being, for this would mean that the creation of Spirit, God, was the opposite of Him in nature and substance. The fact is man is spiritual, not material, whether we perceive this fact yet or not.

As Christian Science explains, our identity, our nature, every aspect of our real being, is what God is expressing of Himself. He is the one Ego—perfect Life, Mind, Soul—whom we reflect. Mrs. Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, writes: "If God, who is Life, were parted for a moment from His reflection, man, during that moment there would be no divinity reflected. The Ego would be unexpressed, and the Father would be childless,—no Father" (Science and Health, p. 306).

Acknowledging our relationship to God makes all the difference when we pray. We aren't lowly, suffering mortals in our Father's sight, trying desperately to win His attention. Such a starting point for prayer would set us apart from Him at the outset. And it's just as faulty to think of God as a careless Father who needs to be reminded of His child's needs. Such erroneous views gain credibility only because the presence and operation of Spirit aren't perceived by the material senses.

Even though God may be unseen to us, He's never unavailable. Wherever we are, God is. God can't exist without His expression, man. It's as impossible to have a candle flame without heat or a sun without sunlight as it is to have God, the one cause, without man, His effect. We'll find it greatly helpful to acknowledge our inseparability from God when we pray, and the Master's words "He that sent me is with me; the Father hath not left me alone" (John 8:29) can inspire us in this work.

Learning that not one of us is ever without the same omnipotent Father who loved Christ Jesus and who empowered his healing works, encourages us to turn wholeheartedly to this unfailing source. It may be some abrupt disruption of our lives that compels a deep yearning to feel God's presence, or perhaps all along we've been earnestly seeking to understand the Science of God and man. Either way, Christian Science shows how to apply effectively the same spiritual laws that Jesus utilized to overrule illness and sin, and how we can feel something of the trust and confidence he must have felt by living in accord with the divine Principle.

The need is to understand the ever-presence of God, and our inseparability from Him as His expression here and now, not simply in some afterlife. Whether we're troubled by a physical disability, we fear our career may be reaching an end, or someone we know seems impossible to get along with, our (and everyone else's) unity with God is a potent and real basis for finding solutions.

Bringing out in our lives more purity, order, wisdom, love, is praying to be the eternal image of God that we actually are. In this way, we see our lives more fully reflecting what constitutes His expression—the real man.

We may not know how others are seeing themselves. Perhaps they're thinking of themselves as alone—without a friend or without help. The need, then, is to be so conscious of God's man, so conscious of the fact that each one of us is really the expression of God's perfect being, that no concept of man as existing apart from God can have a foothold in our thought. In this way we help one another learn—and prove—the powerful truth that our Father has not left us alone.

Russ Gerber