by Anthony Whitehouse CS
 
 There is an aspect of Love which we forget at our peril and without which healing hardly ever appears.
 
 It is the aspect of Comfort.
 
 When we feel love we should also feel comforted.  It is therefore true 
to say that unless we feel comforted we have not really felt the power 
of love.   
 
 And yet how often 
do we make protestations of Love and worship at its altar and yet 
overlook that unless comfort is also present we have worshipped in vain?
 
 Do you have a sense of Comfort?  Then if you do, you have understood the meaning of love and you are in God’s presence.
 
 If we are in great distress, looking for healing that healing is never
 going to appear unless we address the discomfort that illness, sin or 
error has carried with it into consciousness.    It does not really 
matter what the error is, whether it is a heart problem or general 
disenchantment with church affairs.  Both challenges have the same 
effect. The rob us of mental comfort and introduce a sense of mental 
discomfort.
 
 So, does the divine Mind operate with a sense of 
discomfort? Obviously not!  Divine Love, Mother love always brings 
with it a sense of comfort because Mother love is always comforting. We 
need to understand this in order to do away with the discomfort and 
allow that sense of comfort to permeate our being and thinking.   No 
amount of meditation on any metaphysical truth will heal without a 
comforting sense of God’s presence because God’s presence IS a 
comforting sense.
 
 If we find ourselves under severe mental 
attack,  in mental distress or paling under the stress of some job that 
needs to be done and which we find we cannot do,  again it is because we
 have not nurtured and cultivated enough the “ comfort” which is the 
principal component of spiritual sense.   
 How can you feel 
troubled, stressed, distressed, tormented,  hate and fear if that sense
 of comfort is there?    It is a hard to actually demonstrate the value
 of harboring  comfort  unless you actually take the trouble to do it.  
You know you are not doing it because of the legions of evil which 
appear without it.
 
 So take time today to cultivate a sense of 
comfort. The Mother Love which is God will appear with it because that 
is exactly the identity of comfort.   When evil appears in the form of a
 “ an imaginable evil such as looming tornado” you can look it in the 
face and have such a robust sense of comfort that the evil will melt 
away.  You will have found your God. 
 
 Hymn 174 (from the Christian Science Hymnal) really nails the question in just a few words
 
 Like as a mother, God comforteth  His children,
 Comfort is calm that bids all tumult cease
 Comfort is hope and courage for endeavor,
 Comfort is love , whose home abides in peace.
