Concordant moving

ONE of the common facts of modern life is that many people move. Jobs change. New opportunities or conditions demand adjustments. And sometimes picking up everything and resettling in a new location seems hard and stressful. But it need not be. At the outset one has to realize that happiness is not dependent on certain outside circumstances but is found in knowing and feeling something of God's allness and in trusting His unfailing goodness. No matter where we move, we're not moving beyond divine Love. In fact, we find in a new location the same sense of God's allness when we open our thought to it. We are ``at home'' in this recognition of God's love at every stage of our move.

The twenty-third Psalm ends with the statement, ``Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.'' And Christ Jesus comforted his disciples by reminding them, ``In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.''1

So our real search is a spiritual one. The Biblical texts above do not discuss mere physical structures but our home in the consciousness of God's presence. We quiet our thought with the understanding that God is our very Mind, always present, guiding and directing, and that our true consciousness and being are totally spiritual, expressing the harmony of the one Mind.

In the understanding of God's love, gained through prayer, we're able to see that we're not truly vulnerable mortals, living in a chancy, material world, victimized by a variety of details that just don't fit. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes, ``Immortal Mind is God, immortal good; in whom the Scripture saith `we live, and move, and have our being.' This Mind, then, is not subject to growth, change, or diminution, but is the divine intelligence, or Principle, of all real being; holding man forever in the rhythmic round of unfolding bliss, as a living witness to and perpetual idea of inexhaustible good.''2

As we go about our move we can pray for a clear understanding of where we really live as God's offspring. This will help to harmonize all aspects of the move.

Not long ago my wife and I looked for a new house. We began with prayer, viewing the situation as not merely a business transaction but as an opportunity to see more clearly where we really live -- in the consciousness of God's love -- and to see expressed in our experience more of God's qualities such as justice, intelligence, love, order, and harmony.

After some searching, we unexpectedly found a good house in a place where we hadn't anticipated looking. It certainly seemed right to go ahead with the purchase of this house, although ours wasn't yet ready to be put on the market.

We made the needed arrangements, trusting that everything would be adjusted in good order. And we also went on with the repairs and upgrading we knew were right to do before selling our house. We felt that obedience to divine law, the law of doing unto others what we would have them do to us, was more important than early marketing, even though we were urged by realtors to put the house on the market right away because the season was coming during which fewer houses sold.

We passed the date the agents had set, but more work needed to be done. And we continued to pray. Then, when the house was nearly ready, an agreement was made to buy it in a single telephone call we made to a friend to thank him for a present. This individual knew the house and asked if it were for sale as soon as we happened to mention we were moving.

None of that had been anticipated or planned. The entire transaction went ahead smoothly, and everyone concerned felt fairly treated. We quickly came to love our new home. And we found advantages in the new situation we had not even thought of.

We were grateful for the confidence that reliance on divine Love's direction and presence gave us. Since our move, we have visited two friends whose moves were also clearly based on prayer and were similarly harmonious and obviously sufficient in every way.

Our true home is our consciousness of the presence of God. Starting there, we are freed from the fear of chance in moving and we prove something of God's allness in the harmony of the move.

1John 14:2. 2Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 82-83.

You can find more articles like this one in the Christian Science Sentinel, a weekly magazine. DAILY BIBLE VERSE: The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way.