Finding Completeness In Divine Love
SATISFYING love is often sought in another person. Yet one has only to look at divorce statistics or listen to heart-wrenching accounts of broken relationships to see that basing happiness on people is uncertain at best.
The Bible assures us that "God is love." The love that comes from God, divine Love, is tender, warm, constant, powerful, bringing to mind a mother's love for a dear child. In Isaiah we read of God: "Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands" (49:15, 16). And St. Paul, in his letter to the Romans, assures us that nothing "shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (8:39).
God is the only genuine source of love and goodness, because God is Love itself, from which all pure expressions of love emanate. God alone can comfort, bring joy, and truly satisfy. Because Love is God, Love must be everywhere. Each one of us, as God's offspring, has the divine right to understand and feel the immediate presence of Love. And it is our right to demonstrate our completeness as Love's very expression. Looking to God for all the love we need never cuts us off from right relationships but enriches and blesses them.
Jesus was the perfect example of man's completeness as Love's expression. In his healing work he saw each man's, woman's, and child's wholeness as God's offspring. In one healing recorded in Luke there was a woman who'd had "a spirit of infirmity" for eighteen years and "could in no wise lift up herself" (see Luke 13:11-13). In studying this account I thought of how the woman may have been feeling mentally burdened, carrying weights of low self-esteem, depression, and defeat. But Jesus spoke to her the powerful words "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity." This was clear proof that limiting traits, including those often attributed to women-instability, emotionalism, dependence, vulnerability-are destroyed by the healing Christ.
I was forced to find a better sense of completeness, joy, and dominion when my husband's change in schedule required him to be away much of every week. It seemed to me that we would barely begin to catch up when he was packing again. Soon I became very depressed. The situation continued for several weeks. Finally, one day while on a walk I quietly reached out to God from the depths of my heart. I was ready for any healing message that might come. To that silent waiting and spiritual yearning came three powerful ideas.
First was the thought that I always had been and always would be wedded to divine Love, God. This relationship with Love had no variableness, no changing. I could expect to understand and feel this Love now, regardless of what was going on.
The second idea came as an assurance that the situation must be met within my own thought, and that when it was met there, I could no longer suffer. This destroyed the sense of helplessness I'd felt and brought needed hope and courage.
The third idea came as an uncovering of a misconception of Love that I'd had. It had always been difficult for me to reconcile feminine qualities with masculine ones. When I felt strong and authoritative, it was difficult for me to express tenderness, gentleness, and love. Now came the sweet assurance that Love confers both strength and tenderness, and that I, as Love's very expression, naturally included both. The Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "Union of the masculine and feminine qualities constitutes completeness. . . . These different elements conjoin naturally with each other, and their true harmony is in spiritual oneness" (p. 57). From that point on I was able to move forward with joy and confidence. Man's spiritual individuality includes no weak spots. We can find real satisfaction in living Love's manly and womanly qualities right here and now.
