Christian Comment with Laura Huxford, Christian Science Reading Room, Lansdown, Stroud

WE NORMALLY change the theme of the Christian Science Reading Room window in Lansdown each week.

But just after the referendum we boldly put ‘Love one another’ in very large letters in the window along with inspirational quotes including this one from Mary Baker Eddy: ‘Love inspires, illumines, designates and leads the way’ and from Tagore: ‘Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation’.

This theme remains in the window and the quotes are supplemented with articles and poems that are renewed weekly, providing continuing support and solace.

But what does loving one another really mean?

There are certainly many ways in which we can go beyond ‘mere sentiment’.

We can resolve to be loving rather than judgmental, impatient, unreasonable towards others.

But the pinnacle of loving another is to resolve to find, and then only to see the good in them.

It’s not striving to find the good but starting from the opposite position – the recognition that as God-created, God-governed individuals we are all, we and everyone else, are inevitably good.

That goodness shines out in the form of joy, intelligence, humour, health, beauty, kindness, perseverance, honesty and so on.

‘Judge not’ an article by Tessa Parmenter published in the Christian Science Monitor last Thursday tells of her frustration with engineers repeatedly failing to mend her boiler, her resort to prayer and then the swift resolution of the problem.

She concludes: ‘My prayers hadn’t begged God to fix the boiler or asked Him to make me love people. They were inspired by a confident trust in Him that an all-knowing and all-acting God had created us to be knowledgeable and right-acting. I just had to see this spiritual view, and doing so made me undoubtedly love my neighbour more. This lesson continues to help me love others better – and to keep my fears and frustrations from running rampant’.

Loving someone is seeing them in their true light.