Feed the famished affections (Part 1)

"Give us this day our daily bread."
Give us grace for today. Feed the famished affections.

"And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
And Love is reflected in love.

"God setteth the solitary in families:" it says in Psalms. God delivers you from loneliness and into love. How? By giving you the grace - the love, the fluidity of thought and the movement of perspective that, what? Awakens you to your authentic purpose: that you are the active expression of His Love in the world. You are Love alive in the world. You reflect that Love that feeds the famished affections. You are the living proof that Love is unconditionally forgiving. You are "Love reflected in love."

Because Love is your true nature, you're naturally attracted to Love's expression, naturally appreciative of it, and naturally connected to it - even while glimpsing that it is something bigger than just any one person. In fact, it isn't personal at all. God's Love is divine, even if it seems humanly expressed and experienced.

As you become more conscious of, feel, appreciate - embrace - this divine sense of Love, you realize that this is why you're here: to live Love, to live to give Love - not live to get love (which is the lie spoken by loneliness). Living to give Love embraces Jesus' command to "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." Living to give is "Love ... reflected in love."

Gently embrace this idea of living to give Love. Your intuition will show you opportunities. Expectancy helps you see them. Faithfulness helps you act on them. And as you practice living to give, living God's precious "grace for today," you'll see that it's for a reason: Because the way God feeds your famished affections is by having you feed someone else's.

"Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals. It is the open fount which cries, 'Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.

"You will learn that in Christian Science the first duty is to obey God, to have one Mind, and to love another as yourself."

Yes. It is actually your duty to love at least one other person as you would yourself.

Yes. You get to be the answer to someone else's prayer for love.

This is Love reflected in love. This is obeying God. This is letting "this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:" This is adoring the Divine Name of Love by being loving. This is striving to know and reflect God's true nature in your relationship to everyone and everything around you.

This isn't necessarily though all easy-peasy. It usually involves some hard work letting go of maybe some not too God-like ways of acting. Because to withhold love is to be in debt. To take love without giving it is to be in debt. To ignore, belittle, mock love is to be in debt.

So if you feel in debt, challenged, by the idea of living to give Love, and want a good example of how this is done, take a look at the life of Jesus in the Gospels. You'll see that Jesus' followers weren't perfect either. Far from it. But you do need to do the same thing they did: follow his incredibly challenging but loving teaching and example as best you can.

And as you do, you begin to understand what Jesus knew implicitly: that that which is the cause and creator of everything, that which is the most fundamental primary power, that which we call God, is actually Love itself. And Love impells expression. Love must be lived.

So the only way to pay off that debt is to do likewise, to live your God-given purpose as His Love-light rejoicing no matter what the circumstances, shining from the top of the hill, bright and active and radiant and loving impartially and universally.

This is not theoretical. It is practical. It can be challenging. It can be difficult. You might resist it. This resistance is the cross. Take it up! This work is the practice. Bring it on! Love is imperative. It has to be seen and felt. It has to be made manifest. It can't just be talked about or thought about or wished for. As an old friend of mine used to say about living Love: "Put some skin on it!"

Sticking to the Love that is God, you find yourself - and all around you - held in His arms, safe, satisfied, rejoicing. And there is never any loneliness or famished affections there, for living in Love is living in the presence, the power, and the glory of God, forever.

Awaking to this as your actual state of being, you'll be too busy loving God and your neighbor as yourself to ever be suckered into that lie of loneliness again.


"Give us this day our daily companioning."
Give us unconditional Love for today. Feed the famished affections of us, our neighbor, and the world.

"And forgive us forgetting to love as we forgive those who we think have forgotten to love us."
And Love is always reflected in love.