Love hasn’t left this home
When faced with the loss of a loved one, we can find comfort and strength in a spiritual view of life as forever sustained by God.
One night after my wife passed on, as I lay in the emptiness, a thought drifted in. A Christian Science practitioner had once asked my wife and me to consider the material substance called air that we accept is always present everywhere, surrounding us, yet unseen. Then she encouraged us to recognize what it is that’s invisible but really ever-present, encircling us all. It’s divine Love, God.
So, in the darkness that night, I prayed to perceive the air around me as a symbol of, or metaphor for, something so much greater – Love’s infinite, spiritual ever-presence. That’s when a healing clarity came to me: “Love hasn’t left this home.”
Our lives might seem the opposite of this. And Sept. 11 is still recalled as a day of great loss by many, not only in the United States but in homes around the world – homes that have lost a husband, wife, son, daughter, or any loved one due to the terrorist attack itself or the decades-long aftermath. To some, their house may still feel the absence of familiar affection, laughter, and that sweet consciousness of another’s precious presence.
Departure of a loved one can come in many forms – decease, divorce, empty-nesting. Yet that which truly connects us to one another, whether together or apart, is Love itself, the divine Spirit that is God, the All-in-all.
Seen in this light of divine Love’s allness, the cherished love felt through an individual’s presence is actually a representation of Love’s love for us reflected in them. And while it is natural to miss a person, the Bible assures us that “the goodness of God [Love] endureth continually” (Psalms 52:1).
The Scriptures also relate Love’s enduring benefits. Speaking of God, the psalmist said, “In your presence is abundant joy; at your right hand are eternal pleasures” (Psalms 16:11, Christian Standard Bible). In the midst of personal loss, we can stand on these promises of the continuity of God, divine good, and the unebbing joy of experiencing Love’s presence. That which has come from God in one form of expression can find fresh expression as our hearts are open to Love’s ongoing love for us and all. Because the substance of Love never leaves, it’s only the unique form in which we have been used to experiencing it that is no longer visible to us.
This is also true for those missing from our lives. Love never leaves them, either, as their individuality goes on, out of our sight but never out of Life, God.
Several Bible accounts, particularly that depicting the resurrection of Jesus, show that life is more than the exhaustible material existence it seems to be. When Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven is within us, he was describing our true abode, spiritual Life, which carries on, unabated, both here and hereafter. This is the harmony of reality, “the invisible universe and spiritual man,” as “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy puts it (p. 337).
No matter how vivid the picture presented by the material senses – that someone precious is now lacking life – there is never truly any to and fro between Life and loss. Death is the material view of the observer, but not the actual state of those we perceive to have passed on, because Life is Spirit’s changeless goodness. Science and Health delineates the ongoing status of this existence in this way: “Because Life is God, Life must be eternal, self-existent. Life is the everlasting I am, the Being who was and is and shall be, whom nothing can erase” (pp. 289-290).
There’s not a single speck of emptiness in eternally self-existent Life, as described in this verse from a rousing hymn:
Everlasting arms of Love
Are beneath, around, above;
God it is who bears us on,
His the arm we lean upon.
(John R. MacDuff, “Christian Science Hymnal,” No. 53, adapt. © CSBD)
This is the Love that never leaves our home, our hearts, our lives. It is ours not only to silently acknowledge but also to yield to and feel, to understand and express, to always look to for love – and to love, as Jesus said, with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind (see Luke 10:27).
Each Sept. 11, and at all times, this consciousness of the Life that is Love is our true home, the true universal home of all, including our loved ones, which neither they nor we ever leave.
Adapted from an editorial published in the Sept. 11, 2023, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.