Friendship with God is a privilege bestowed on all men if they will but recognize it and claim it for their own. When understood in its Science, friendship with God opens the gates of heaven and reveals the health, harmony, and abundance that are our birthright as children of divine Love.
Human friendship, important as it is, can fluctuate from extremes of emotional attachment to cool civility. Personal rapport can be lost, but the higher relationship of God and man, divine Principle and idea, can never alter. The divine Mind and its reflection, spiritual man, although distinct, are one in being. Nothing can break up the oneness of substance, life, consciousness, that is the basis of this relationship.
God, divine Love, knows every individual manifestation of Himself, and this constant eternal knowing constitutes the identity of every idea. God's all-encircling tenderness never comes or goes. It is here now, and in human experience it is our privilege to know this and rejoice in it. We can recognize the immediacy of the Father-Mother's friendship and the protecting care and supporting sustenance it implies. The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, states, "Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation." Science and Health, p. 332;
