Article November 19, 2012 Issue

Every human need?

Marjorie Kehe

“Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.” That statement from Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 494) is one of my favorites. I’ve known it since I was a child (it was written on the wall of the first church I ever attended), and the thought of it has comforted me many times in many different situations.

Yet, one day, I heard that sentence read during a church service and suddenly I felt shaken. “What does it really mean?” I wondered. Human needs, it would seem, are so many and so diverse. How could there possibly be a guarantee that all will be met?

And then it hit me: something I had never really seen clearly before. The truth is that in the reality of Spirit there are no needs! In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy offers this definition of God: “The great I am; the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal; Principle; Mind; Soul; Spirit; Life; Truth; Love; all substance; intelligence” (p. 587).