At Last I Was at Home
It all began one day, three years earlier, when I came to the realization that the void I had been feeling in my life was the lack of God. I didn’t know how or when my path had strayed from Gods, for our relationship had started when I was a young child. I have always known that God came into my life between the ages of five and six. Now, however, there was an inner hunger, an emptiness within me, and I was at a loss as to how to find God again. My prayer that day was simple: “Father, if you are still there, please help me find you.” I presume it was my Thought Adjuster that had been causing this inner hunger, and my prayer testified that communication still existed.
The answer to my prayer was instantaneous; I was enveloped in ecstasy, in a wonderful cocoon of love. I immediately knew the Father was still there as he welcomed me home and held me in his loving embrace.
I was then led through a three-year educational process that opened my mind to a wider concept of God. The books I read in this course of study were found in strange and varied places, yet each one held something special that helped me open my mind and let God out of the covers of the Bible. After eighteen months of this process I even commented to my husband that God was educating me for something. The education continued for another eighteen months, and then the goal was brought within my grasp.
It was May 11,1974. We were at a church retreat. At the end of the day one of the other participants said to me, “I have a book you have to read; it is called The Urantia Book.” I immediately realized that this was the object I had been working towards for the previous three years. This friend agreed to lend me her personal copy, and as she handed it to me she commented that she didn’t understand why she was doing it because she wouldn’t even let her own family members borrow her book. I was lost to my family for the following four months as I read voraciously from the title page through to the end.
The Foreword to The Urantia Book was quite challenging and I wondered if the whole book was going to be the same. But when I got to Paper 5, “God’s Relation to the Individual,” I wept. Here, finally, was the God of my childhood, the God who loves his children beyond our ability to comprehend; the God who expands our concept of unconditional love. At last I had a God who answered all my needs – spiritually, emotionally, intellectually and psychologically. This was a God I could believe in wholly. At last I was at home.
