Divine Love – our home base

For a military family, a home base is where the family lives and obtains needed supplies. It’s the central core of all operations, and it’s the starting and returning point for those who go out on operations. As I’ve considered a more spiritual concept of a home base, I’ve recognized God, divine Love, as my family’s home base.

In my husband’s naval career, we had a change of home base five times in eight years. With each move, I found myself alone in an unfamiliar place, without friends, family, home, church, or employment. It was tempting to think that I was lacking almost everything. To make things even harder, an unexpected terrorist attack on the United States changed my expectation of military service from adventure to uncertainty.

My husband’s schedule of deployment was top secret and often happened spontaneously, so I never knew exactly when he was coming or going. Weeks would pass without the ability to communicate with him. I found it vitally important to understand that my true home base – and his – is God, Love, the divine Principle of all action. This meant gaining a spiritual sense of where our good comes from.

In “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mary Baker Eddy says of the Christian Science she discovered, “The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind” (p. 162).

This helped me realize that, despite the uncertainty, I was never alone, and that employment, supply, safety, communication, companionship, community, and Church are all spiritual ideas, unlimited and available to everyone at all times.

During one of our changes of home port from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast of the US, I had a hard time finding employment. I spent weeks searching for jobs, but to no avail. I felt I had exhausted all of the resources that I could think of, and I still didn’t have a job. My husband was about to leave on his first deployment, and I felt uncertain about the future.

One day, I called my mom in tears, and she reminded me to “remember the dishwasher.” She was referring to a Christian Science audio program we’d both heard in which one of the speakers shared that he’d worked as a dishwasher, but disliked that job. However, if he couldn’t put the clean dishes away with a heart full of love, he would take them back down again and start over. As soon as he started doing each task with love, he started to see and feel the presence of God’s love all around him. This had a profound healing effect, and he even received several job offers. (See “God’s guidance in the workplace,” Sentinel Radio, May 31, 1998.)

The Bible says, “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves” (Philippians 2:3). I decided to follow this counsel. This mental “change of base” from a material to a spiritual perspective taught me that right employment is about humbly serving God and doing everything with a heart full of love – to the glory of God, not for any glory of my own.

As soon as I let unselfed love and service to God guide my job search, my fear and frustration subsided. Soon, I received a phone call from another Navy wife who had planned on quitting her job to go back to school, but felt bad about leaving her employer without an assistant. She asked me if I had any interest in being her replacement, and even though I didn’t have much experience in the field, I immediately accepted. The work was dynamic, flexible, and exciting, and I felt a fuller sense of God’s protecting power and guidance in my life.

The next Bible verse after the one quoted above continues, “Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others” (Philippians 2:4). This experience reflects that quote. My friend had been unselfish in not wanting to leave her employer to find a replacement and in thinking of me as a perfect candidate. Everyone had been blessed.

From this point on, I always found purposeful employment at each new duty station. This verse describes my experience beautifully:

Know, O child, thy full salvation;
Rise o’er sin and fear and care;
Joy to find, in every station,
Something still to do, or bear.
(Henry Francis Lyte, “Christian Science Hymnal,” No. 166, adapt. © CSBD)

When we’re facing uncertainty, where things seem as though they are constantly changing, or where fear seems to prevail, divine Love is guiding us to the home base of spiritual understanding, revealing the harmony of the divine Mind, and giving us a safe place to land.