Does Your Home Feel Like Heaven?

IF you asked four people what their idea of the perfect house would be, almost certainly there'd be four different answers. There is no universally perfect house. But there is a spiritual idea of home that is universally ideal. It is our oneness with our tender Father-Mother God. ``For in him we live, and move, and have our being,'' the Bible assures us in the book of Acts (17:28).

Christ Jesus described this spiritually mental dwelling, saying, ``The kingdom of God is within you'' (Luke 17:21). In this way the Master assured us that heaven is not something we need to go elsewhere to seek, for no one is ever separate from it. It is guaranteed to each of us as God's children, as His spiritual ideas. Though Christ Jesus appeared to have no permanent residence during the three years of his healing mission, he always manifested this sense of home, this sense of peace, protection, safety, order, love. But Jesus also seems to have always had a place to stay at night as well. His spiritual sense of home was always evidenced in meeting the human needs for food, shelter, and care.

What makes the spiritual idea of home so perfect? Well, it has none of the limitations of a material structure and all of the advantages of divinity. For instance, our true home is indestructible and eternal. It is secured in divine Mind's eternal knowing.

This home is never out of our price range. It is at once priceless and the free gift of God, Love. Likewise, our idea-home is unchanging, so we'll never be forced to move out of it. Yet the infinite variety and expanse of Soul's views are forever unfolded to us from this mental standpoint. Our spiritual home is permanent, spacious, comfortable, perfectly located, unerringly maintained, filled with joy and companionship, and yet private and serene.

Consciously abiding in this precious oneness with God results in our human needs for appropriate living conditions being met in very practical ways. Let me illustrate:

Recently our family needed to be closer to the children's school, to my mom, and to the children's lessons. We had little for a down payment, and we were moving to an area of greater expense. Yet we felt we still needed four bedrooms, office space, and a location convenient to our activities. Could we find such a perfect house on our budget?

I prayed all during this time to really feel my oneness with God. Every time I felt tempted to act on what I call ``the accretion mode''--trying to get something more, make something happen, or to take things into my own hands--I endeavored to yield to God's control and care.

One day, we made an appointment with a real estate agent. He came prepared with a stack of information about houses that generally met our specifications. The one on top of the stack, and the first one we visited, was ideal! It had four bedrooms, an extra large garage for my husband's projects, was in our price range, five minutes from my mom's house, and only seven minutes from school. We easily found office space in a building near by. Sometimes we just shake our heads in grateful awe. This house wouldn't be perfect for everyone, of course, but so much of heaven shines through it in the way it meets our family's needs that we feel something of the heaven of our spiritually mental home with God.

Mary Baker Eddy, the author of the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, tells us, ``Pilgrim on earth, thy home is heaven; stranger, thou art the guest of God'' (p. 254).

If you are seeking a new home, are now homeless, or are just trying to find more happiness and peace in your existing location, you have a right to feel heaven, harmony, right now. God loves you dearly, and there is nothing to prevent you from feeling His love. Dwelling quietly and consistently in the embrace of divine Love begins at once to harmonize and adjust your experience and will show you each day a little more of heaven.