HOW grateful we are for the privilege of prayer! The revelation of the nature of God and man and their relationship, which is given to us in Christian Science, lifts prayer above empty ceremony or doubtful petition into the joy of loving communion and powerful action.
True prayer begins with an understanding that God is the loving, wise Father, who tenderly cares for each of His children. In the spiritual interpretation of the Lord's Prayer, which is included in the remarkable chapter on Prayer in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 16, 17), Mary Baker Eddy speaks of God as "our Father-Mother." To the realization that God is our Father, expressed in the father-love which broadly provides for us, is thus added the recognition of God as Mother, with all the delicate tenderness of the mother-love which would meet every least need of a child even before it knows its need. So God loves each one of us, individually, with all the strength and tenderness of infinite Love.
Not only does God love each one of us as individual man, but we love God as One. God is not only our loving Father-Mother, but our supreme Friend. In our true being we love what He loves, rejoice in all the good that He enjoys, and love the happy children that He loves. "But I cannot see Him," someone may say. Do we through physical sense see the characteristics that form the basis of our friendships? Can we see love, or intelligence, or appreciation of harmony and beauty, or any of the factors in congenial friendship? No, not with physical vision. But we recognize their presence with a certainty beyond anything the physical senses can convey. And just as we awaken to the facts of mathematics when we give them our attention, so also, when we give our thought to spiritual facts, we awaken to the friendliness of God as Love.
