A young man found himself, year after year, yearning for a companion—a yearning partly motivated by the fear of solitude. Then he started dating a young woman. After three years, despite some very clear warning signals that the relationship was not on a firm footing, he and the woman were married. A week after the wedding, his wife told him she had made a mistake and was leaving! He felt as if his whole world was crumbling. Some time later a second, very promising relationship ended as abruptly—but this time a month before the wedding.
The man plunged into the study of Christian Science as never before. Despite a very demanding job, he started studying and praying six to eight hours a day. One passage in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy helped him greatly during this period: "May mercy and truth go before you: may the lamp of your life continually be full of oil, and you be wedded to the spiritual idea, Christ; then will you heal, and teach, and preach, on the ascending scale of everlasting Life and Love." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 151.
His study led him to gain a deeper understanding of one of the key points of Christian Science: our one and only real identity is spiritual, totally Godlike. The phrase "wedded to the spiritual idea, Christ" reminded him of the Bible's comment that we are "hid with Christ in God," Col. 3:3. that is, hidden from the material senses, from a sense of life that is often abrasive, painful, shocking. These senses are witnesses for the claim that there is another reality, another power, opposed to God, capable of foiling His plan of unlimited good for each one of His infinitely cherished children.
