When I was a little girl and was ready to start school for the first time, I was reluctant to leave home. I felt frightened and insecure. My mother, noticing a snail crawling along the walk, pointed out that this little creature carried its home with it in the form of a shell. She likened this to the spiritual fact that I, too, carried my home with me. It wasn't a shell, like the house of the little snail; it was the ever-present love of God that surrounded me and cared for me. Mother pointed out that in this consciousness of God's ever-presence I could never feel insecure, afraid, or anxious, because I would know I was at one with my Father-Mother God. This spiritual, conscious unity with Him was my true home.
This realization of my inseparability from God and of my true home continues to sustain me. There was another, related lesson in Christian Science I had to learn, however, that was just as practical and important. While we can certainly be aware of God's loving and comforting all-presence, we have something to do about it. We have to learn to stay consciously at home in His presence by letting not just our thoughts but our lives and our actions attest to the vital fact that we are indeed one with God, good.
For example, through Christian Science we know that God is ever-present Love, and we may indeed feel His loving care; but until we strive to express love in our daily affairs by actually living Love and expressing God's goodness, we are not truly demonstrating our oneness with God. To put it succinctly, staying at home, that is, keeping our thought at home with God, is the moment-by-moment practice of divine Truth. It means steadfastly and energetically standing fast with God and then manifesting through all our human activities the beautiful attributes of God. Paul in his message to the Galatians spoke of "the fruit of the Spirit," which he defined as "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance."Gal. 5:22, 23. These qualities reflect God's goodness in human living, and we need to cultivate them and strive to use them with growing consistency.
