Article April 3, 1948 Issue

WHAT IS THE ONE THING NEEDFUL?

LESLIE BURN ANDREAE

The Bible teaches that God, divine Love, abundantly supplies human needs when we understand His nature and obey His laws. At this time in the world's history a more general and consistent recognition of God as divine Love and of man as His spiritual image and likeness will do more to bring peace and abundance to mankind than all that human means and methods can devise. Recognition of this truth is the one thing needful.

Human planning and minute detailing are often accompanied by anxiety and strife and are the cause of much unsuccessful endeavor. A finite sense of divine Love, expressed in limited, human outlining and failure to trust God wholeheartedly to fill the human need, stultifies our efforts. The one sure way of meeting humanity's needs is through a demonstrable understanding of God's universal, impartial, and ever-present love for His creation. When Jesus was in the house of Martha, her sister Mary sat at the Master's feet and listened to his words, while Martha "was cumbered about much serving" and "troubled about many things." Hence Jesus' admonition to Martha (Luke 10:42), "But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her."

A demonstrable understanding of God reveals that the need, however it appears, is always only a human belief and is never real, because in reality man is now and always complete. Sometimes a student of Christian Science forgets this in working out problems of supply and becomes mesmerized into thinking the need real, part of himself. Yet the selfsame student in a case of sickness will steadfastly hold to his eternal perfection as God's image and likeness and will persistently affirm the unreality of disease. He does not work merely to bring a sense of abundance and health in place of limitation and disease. He works to realize that because God is All and man is now and eternally His image and likeness, error's claims have no place in his consciousness or being. A clear realization of the perfection of God and man is as necessary to uncover and refute error's aggressive lie in the case of discord and lack as in the case of sickness.

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