Since I took early retirement from extremely active work several years ago, I've thought many times about that word retire. "Retired from what?" I ask myself. A high-pressured job? All activity? The human race?
It might sometimes seem like a good idea to retire to one's home, stay inside, and even close the drapes. But that involves a different meaning of retire—that is, to retreat. For example, we say the troops in a battle retired from the front line. This action could imply defeat, going backward not forward! Such retirement does not bring safety; it isolates one within a fragile cocoon of self-absorption, self-involvement, just plain selfishness! Is this what God, our heavenly Father-Mother, has in store for each of us—His beloved child, His perfect, spiritual idea? No! The teachings of Christian Science, exploring the spiritual meaning of the Holy Scriptures, reveal that God is the ever-active, only Mind, and that man is His spiritual reflection. God has created man in His own image and likeness to express Him in all His ways. So there can never be a folding up, retirement, or backward stage in man's activity as God's perfect spiritual idea; God's being is unfoldment.
Furthermore, omniactive Mind always impels and supplies what it creates. Each of God's ideas has a purpose, a function, a useful niche to fill. Since each is, in truth, the perfect child of God now, each one has that purpose and place even now. Man is never separate from God; he coexists with Him, the all-active divine Principle, Love.
