Welcome home

SOME friends recently did some house-sitting for us while we were away. When she returned the key, the wife commented, ``It was fun being `homeowners' for a few days!'' Her comment made me think more about home. I found myself wishing that my friends, who rent, could own their own home, as my husband and I do. But I began to see that, in a deeper sense, they were already homeowners too.

Being a homeowner these days is financially impossible for some people. On top of that, home can be more of a battleground at times than a haven of harmony and happiness. When I was growing up, our home was anything but filled with peace. My parents frequently fought. There was verbal and physical abuse, adultery, and eventually a divorce. Their children became involved with drugs, drinking, and other harmful activities.

Shortly after entering college, however, a wonderful home was given to me. A home given to a college student? Impossible! Not really, because this home didn't consist of four walls and a white picket fence. It consisted of an understanding that my real being is the beloved child of God. For the first time in my life I felt so loved, so special to my Father-Mother God. Needless to say, the drugs, drinking, and other vices were healed quickly.

I had come home! And what had brought me my new home was Christian Science. I was gaining a wholly new perspective on who I was. I learned that I was not the messed-up mortal I had thought I was but rather God's spiritual offspring. I learned, too, that God, the one infinite, divine Mind, was truly my Mind, the origin of my conscious being, and that He was loving me, knowing me.

Over the years, I've continued to identify myself and others as the very expression of God, as His idea, an idea that's entirely good. I've come to see home less as a specific location and more as the consciousness of God's allness and goodness. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, gives the spiritual sense of Deity in place of the corporeal in the twenty-third Psalm. She interprets the last verse, ``Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house [the consciousness] of [LOVE] for ever.''1

Who had a better home than the Master, Christ Jesus? His consciousness of God's goodness completely replaced a mortal sense of man as fault-ridden and subject to evil with the understanding that man is what God knows -- and this is eternally good. He took his ``home,'' his consciousness of the perfection of God's creation, with him wherever he went. And this pure consciousness healed the sick, the sinning, and even raised the dead.

Those who think they'll never own a home or have a place to go home to, or who despair of ever stopping the abuse, infidelity, misery, at home, can take heart. Now, more than ever, may be the time to find the home each of us includes as a spiritual birthright. God intends only good -- harmony, completeness, peace -- for you. He is constantly holding you very close to Him, cherishing each of His children. The conscious understanding of who you really are is home. And as I have seen in my own experience, this realization of what constitutes home will adjust your homelife in whatever way is needed.

Welcome home!

1Science and Health, p. 578.

You can find more articles like this one in the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly magazine. DAILY BIBLE VERSE: The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage....Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. Psalms 16:6,11