Never without home

RECENTLY, while praying about the plight of the homeless, I was struck by the fact that, technically speaking, Jesus was homeless. Yet he was never without home and never without full and proper care. His teachings indicate that he understood the true nature of home and that it relates to God (see, for instance, John 14:2). Studying Jesus' life, you come to believe that his pure consciousness of God's presence and love is what cared for him. Whether he was in the wilderness or in the heart of Jerusalem, this consciousness of God sustained him, fully supplying his practical needs.

Turning to God for help through prayer isn't something unrelated to the human scene. Jesus' dependence on spiritual resources neither overlooked nor underestimated the human need. And he never felt overwhelmed by circumstances.

Jesus' life impels us to think more deeply about God's care. Could it really have been intended just for Jesus and his time? There's something in our hearts that must rebel at such a notion. God's love and care haven't changed. So the lessening of homelessness must certainly have to be forwarded by a better understanding of how to apply the truth of God's care to today's need.

One important step, I've found, is to persistently question and challenge the assumption that it's possible to be cut off from God's care or to be undeserving of it. Both of these feelings sometimes hang ominously over the whole picture of the homeless. Are they somehow God's forgotten children? No! Coming to terms with the fact that God's love is necessarily universal and impartial, just as Jesus proved it to be, begins to make us think and act differently about the situation. We begin to stop feeling and acting helpless. Step by step we begin to look for, expect, and find solutions.

I had the experience once of losing a car, and the lessons I learned in resolving the situation relate to what I've been talking about here.

My car was destroyed in a flood during a huge storm. I felt like a helpless victim of circumstance. It was really a feeling of being abandoned by God. And that, not the lost car, was what was most disconcerting. I had studied the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy,1 enough to know that it was impossible to be cut off from God. I knew that if I persisted in study and prayer I could learn something new about the eternal fact of God's perfect, spiritual creation, and furthermore I could prove it. The true nature of God's creation is spiritual and complete, because it expresses His nature. Although this may seem a distant, impractical theory, unrelated to ``real life,'' it's highly practical reality, which can have a powerful healing influence in our lives through prayer.

Prayer began to dissolve the fear and shock with convincing spiritual facts. I could see that this incident didn't have to have an affect on me! While it had destroyed a car, it couldn't destroy God's care or my ability to go forward and prove that care in a tangible way.

The thought would often nag me, though, that I had lost my car. This feeling of being an unfortunate victim of circumstance would virtually crowd out the vital fact that I had alternate transportation! I wasn't deprived at all, and yet I was being made to feel that way.

While homelessness is more than just a feeling, it is the healing of feeling beyond God's care that opens our eyes to opportunities and practical solutions. We can begin to prove how the true ideas that we always include, such as home and unrestricted activity, come from God and are limitless in their application and availability. Science and Health states, referring to the true selfhood of man, ``He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas....''2

God's love and care are ample to meet our needs now as certainly as in Jesus' time. While the world's needs are great, every experience we have that proves God's care is evidence of what's possible, practical, and readily available to us all.

1The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. 2Science and Health, p. 475. You can find more articles like this one in the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly magazine. DAILY BIBLE VERSE Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. Psalms 90:1