There is a statement in the Christian Science textbook that has helped me get my priorities straight and brought healing time and time again. It says, “The vital part, the heart and soul of Christian Science, is Love” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 113). Recently, this statement has also anchored my thought with regard to church. That is, the same divine Love, God, that is the “heart and soul of Christian Science” is the Love that must be understood and demonstrated, so that love is lived in the heart and soul of the members of a branch Church of Christ, Scientist. As we express more of divine Love, this Love is found underlying our church services, Reading Rooms, and Sunday Schools.
Seeing the capital L on the “Love” referred to in this statement sets my thought on the right path immediately when thinking about love in church. Referring to God, the New Testament tells us clearly, “We love him, because he first loved us” (I John 4:19). And Science and Health states: “A misplaced word changes the sense and misstates the Science of the Scriptures, as, for instance, to name Love as merely an attribute of God; but we can by special and proper capitalization speak of the love of Love, meaning by that what the beloved disciple meant in one of his epistles, when he said, ‘God is love’ ” (pp. 319–320).
Understanding that all real love is in and of God, who infinitely loves each of us, impels us to express this love in church, rather than relax on this demand or feel that we can let someone else do it instead. As we do this, people coming into a branch church will feel the warm, inclusive, reassuring love of God being demonstrated. This promotes Christ-healing in our services. When this vibrant, powerful sense of love prevails, the limiting sense of human differences—economic, racial, cultural, political, educational, and so forth—begins to dissolve, and those present feel embraced in the spirit of divine Love expressed, and in the pursuit of a better understanding of God—of Truth, which heals.
