Facing my immortality

My mother lived in a care facility. She was older than most of the other residents of advanced years, and as I visited her every day, my goal was to gain a better understanding of her true being as a loved and undying expression of her Maker.

As you might imagine, immortality isn't the first thought that comes to mind to anyone who enters such a facility. But it came to be a very needed and important focus for me. As I strove to understand more of my mother's and my immortality, to see through the veil of impending death to a higher concept of life, I found my thought opening to immortal life as the natural, eternal state of each of us.

There's authority for this conviction in the Bible and in the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, whose Bible-based works offer hope and healing. These writings, which include the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," are for all interested in seeing God's presence made practical in their lives.

To see ourselves in spiritual terms so we can better perceive God's presence can be done by rejecting thoughts that suggest our identity is chained to matter, subject to its vagaries, or that any one of us can be less than what we were created to be. This involves a moment-by-moment surrendering of each thought that even hints at limitations, and accepting the realness of God.

For me, this yielding takes place as I read statements such as this one from Science and Health: "As a material, theoretical life-basis is found to be a misapprehension of existence, the spiritual and divine Principle of man dawns upon human thought, and leads it to 'where the young child was,' – even to the birth of a new-old idea, to the spiritual sense of being and of what Life includes" (p. 191).

As God's expression, we have the spiritual authority and stature to stand up to whatever would make us feel that we can't know God as the source of our being. When I take this stand, I'm exercising the dominion that the first chapter of Genesis tells us God gave man, as His image and likeness. In a modest way, I was defining my mother's – and my – immortality as a genuine reality.

Over a year ago, my mother's roommate passed away. The prediction was that Mom would soon follow; she appeared despondent and listless after her roommate was no longer around. It was during that time that I gained through prayer an honest conviction that my mother already exists in a state of perfection – she doesn't need to go on in order to be perfected. She is permanently the complete idea of an all-loving God.

After several months, the hospice care that had been called in by the facility to assist my mother determined that she no longer needed their services. She continued to be a shining light to all who attended to her needs. When she passed on recently, I felt a sweet sense that her life, her identity as God's child, was intact and continuing.

Truly accepting our immortality wipes away whatever would cloud our vision of all that God provides for us. We have a heritage cherished and preserved by God that enables us to glorify Him in body and in spirit. Knowing this, we can fearlessly go forth to face down whatever would attempt to deprive us of what we know to be true.

Claiming our immortality step by step helps lift the gloom of death for ourselves and others. Whatever our present experience is, God's love is here to guide us to a fuller understanding of our life in Him.

Glimpsing in this human experience a view of immortality helps annihilate time's frightening limitations and frees us to claim all that God created us to be. Immortality is yours and mine right now. St. Paul stated with conviction, "For in him we live, and move, and have our being ... for we are also his offspring" (Acts 17:28). Why not accept this and begin living out from the expansive concept of our present immortality?