Spring Housecleaning

AH, spring! All over our little village you can see evidence of people cleaning the long winter's dust from their houses. They're clearing cobwebs from the corners, shampooing carpets, scrubbing musty walls, and throwing open freshly washed windows so that the spring breezes can clear out the house.

Have you ever felt your own home needed some mental cleaning up? Perhaps some anger cleared out? Or a touch of dishonesty faced up to? Or a dark corner of gloominess reexamined in a new light? Certainly a place where a family dwells shouldn't merely endure such things.

Dark corners like this hide the beauty and goodness inherent in the true, spiritual individuality of those living in the home. That goodness deserves preservation.

In a parable Christ Jesus once asked, ``What woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it?''1 Our efforts to ``sweep the house,'' to purify our mental home, need to be spiritually based. In other words, we need to call upon the power of God and His truth and not simply rely on human capacities. We need spiritual light.

In the Bible we can see ``light'' as corresponding to truth -- the truth of God and His creation of, man, while ``darkness'' signifies ignorance of what man really is. God is good, and He creates not even a spot of evil in man. As we read in I John, ``God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.''2

This spiritual reality can become the basis of our lives as we confront those negative elements in ourselves or the family. Since God, the divine Mind, includes only purity and goodness, and since He made man to mirror His own nature, we simply don't have to submit to impure thinking in our home. It's not native to us. It's not characteristic of our true selfhood, and on this basis whatever is ungodlike can be exposed and removed.

Spiritual light heals -- it simply dispels darkness. Of course, we need to make an effort to watch the kinds of thoughts we entertain and exclude the ungodlike ones. But because God's light and love for man are always at work, excluding anything unlike good, the power of divine law is solidly behind our effort. Wholehearted and patient persistence in our effort can bring not only improvement and healing but a greater feeling of closeness to God among family members.

The teachings of Christian Science show that the truth of God and man heals not only sinful thinking but disease as well, because nothing unlike the divine nature is an actual part of our identity, though it may seem very concrete. God lovingly creates each one with a distinct spiritual individuality, flawless in every detail. And, since He is Love itself, He doesn't allow that individuality to drift into wrong thinking or to be victimized by any form of evil. His law is always at work preserving man and his individuality.

As we turn to the light of this truth for ourselves, our family, and our home, we'll find that we're ready for mental housecleaning. And not only will unwelcome patterns of thought be cleaned up; we'll find increased protection from illness too. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes, referring to God as Truth: ``Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth.''3

Nothing can equal the divine power in bringing healing into our lives. This is real housecleaning! And we can do it any season of the year.

1Luke 15:8. 2I John 1:5. 3Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 162.