Purpose of the heart

详细摘要

Love isn’t something we need to try to find for ourselves in a certain person or place, but because Love is God, we all can feel truly loved and ...

Love isn’t something we need to try to find for ourselves in a certain person or place, but because Love is God, we all can feel truly loved and loving. Original content on Christian Science written for this column by one of our readers. Audio read by a member of our audio team.

Looking back, it makes no sense. But at some point, I decided I simply was not worthy of love and never would be – I just wasn’t made or meant for it. It wasn’t part of who I was.

It took years to overcome this feeling, but I know that Christian Science is what opened the way. The discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, shared this important message that paved the way for me in her keystone work, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures”: “We should examine ourselves and learn what is the affection and purpose of the heart, for in this way only can we learn what we honestly are” (p. 8).

From the standpoint of thinking I couldn’t take part in any “affection and purpose of the heart,” this self-examination was a nonstarter. But my journey toward self-examination eventually started with the Bible.

Book after book of the Bible describes man’s growing understanding of the power that is all-inclusive good, God. The Bible also says of this power, “God is love” (I John 4:16), and tells us that we are children of Love, the expression of that power (see I John 3:2). Because God made us spiritually, in His image, we can’t have any quality apart from Love. So that must mean we are compassionate, caring, and loving. And we can’t help but be loved too, because, by its very nature, Love can only love its creation, like a tender Mother or a protective Father. Love loves you, me, and all of creation. We also learn from the Bible that this creation is truly and only spiritual and good.

In spite of what might seem to be happening in our lives, we always have the love of God with us. Christ, the true idea of Love, is always speaking to our hearts.

It’s this understanding that opened the way for me.

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