Heartfelt Love - And Completeness
WHILE my husband was paying for our breakfast at a western hotel, a woman standing next to me looked directly at me and said, "Be glad you have him-my husband has been gone for thirty-three years." I put my arm around her and assured her that I was very grateful for my husband's love. Then, moved by a feeling of kinship, I spontaneously added: "You know, the love your husband had for you is everlasting. You can continue to feel and enjoy that love every day."
She quickly responded, "I know that. I just long to feel his arm around me as you are hugging me." In that moment of sharing, we confirmed the worth of steadfast, requited love between husband and wife-love that isn't dependent on personal presence, love that continues because it is anchored in God, who is eternal Love.
As my husband and I drove to our destination, I prayed to do a better job of seeing everyone's, including this woman's, spiritual completeness as a child of God. As the only true creator of man, God provides every quality essential to true happiness. Companionship, tenderness, consideration, and unending, inextinguishable love are all part of our God-given completeness. Because God is All (and He is good), nothing unlike Him can enter our experience. No loss or sorrow can obscure His perfect creation or keep us from expressing the spiritual completeness and contentment that are inherently natural to each of us.
Christ Jesus was always seeing people as they genuinely are: spiritually whole in God, Spirit. Jesus didn't bypass problems or consider anyone unworthy of healing. His ministry brims over with moments of exchange with people who were socially rejected. Luke's Gospel tells us, for example, that when Jesus entered Jericho, Zacchaeus, a despised tax collector, had climbed a tree so that he could see better. Jesus didn't ignore him; in fact, he looked up into the tree and invited himself to dinner at Zacchaeus's home! (see 19:1-10) And John tells us of another incident when, at a common well, Jesus struck up a conversation with a Samaritan woman. His exchange with her was so filled with spiritual light that she knew Jesus' spiritual identity as the Christ (see 4:6-29).
This same Christ is with us today, touching and healing human hearts with love that stays with us. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, the author, Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, writes of Christ: "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness" (p. 332). This communication between God and man is the eternal Christ, Truth. Since there is but one true man-God's spiritual expression-each of us is really Godlike. Our individuality is absolutely pure, complete, contented, and immortal. Nothing needs to be added to our being, and nothing can be taken from our being. How gloriously such an understanding of God's Christ can immediately heal human hurts.
Anyone can experience this divine presence by accepting these two spiritual facts: God's allness and man's oneness with Him. The growing awareness of this completeness makes each day and each experience purposeful and satisfying. We see our mission in the light of Christ, man's oneness with God. This requires feeling God's nearness so clearly that Christ is our dearest companion. Then we are never alone-but always companioned by spiritual ideas that precisely meet our need.
This blessedness is the compelling message of the Gospels. Jesus' mission was to bless all mankind, to show us our unbreakable unity with God. Across the world today, people like you and me are hearing the Christ speaking to us. Even in moments of despair or frustration or loneliness, we can feel Christ's nearness and hear the spiritual message we need in order to fill any seeming void. We feel something of Jesus' certainty of completeness that enabled him to say: "He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him" (John 8:29). We can never be left out of God's love.
