People who love God want to do what He wants them to do. But what does He want? Sometimes in great earnestness or even desperation we turn to Him and pray, "Father, what would You have me do? I'll follow whatever path You lay out for me."

Such humble willingness to yield to His will often indicates a state of thought that is receptive to good. But this is only a modest beginning if we expect to truly yield to Him. Christian Science teaches us what God wants of us in every instance. He wants—in fact, by His very nature He absolutely requires—perfection. Nothing more. Nothing less.

If we think that we can persuade God to tell us which direction to take or what decision to make humanly, we need to learn more about who God is, what our relationship to Him is, and what He actually requires of us. As this understanding expands, divine direction comes to light. God is infinite, unchanging Principle. He is Truth itself. His presence is the vivid and unchallenged ever presence of perfection. God is All, and His perfection has no exceptions. Man is at one with God; he expresses the pure and unadulterated perfection of Principle. Man—the true man that God made and permanently maintains—is never in a position of uncertainty, indecision, fear. He never has to select from a set of options—some being right and others perhaps wrong. Man simply expresses the constant and eternally expanding laws of Principle.

Man's existence is not a process of facing various dilemmas. The allness of Principle poses no question. And so we need to do more than tell God we will take whichever human path He gives us. We need to understand that God doesn't offer a human path. He requires the only real path there is—the path of perfection. Perfection doesn't include a single element of discord or difficulty. It is the unfolding reality of beauty, goodness, and love.

Man unerringly expresses the perfection of Principle, but mankind—the limited, changing, inaccurate concept of man—have not yet admitted the true identity and purpose of man. We think of ourselves, in large part, as relatively ignorant, oftentimes sinning, and eventually dying, mortals. We generally conceive our role in life to be one of trying as best we can to take the right steps, make the right decisions, choose the right alternatives. If we feel a religious impulse, we might base much of this effort to make the proper selections in life on a desire to take the human footsteps we feel He directs us to take. But Mrs. Eddy writes, "Unless you fully perceive that you are the child of God, hence perfect, you have no Principle to demonstrate and no rule for its demonstration." ^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 242;}

When we are faced with an uncertainty, a decision, a choice, it is of tremendous practical value to realize that God knows nothing of the human choice—that He knows only perfection and He requires our true selfhood to know only the reality of Principle. The "choice" we humanly must make is only to surrender the belief that man is mortal—that he is faced with uncertainty and has the potential to err. The prophet perceived God's promise of a place and an everlasting name for those who "choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant." ^{Isa. 56:4.}

If we turn to God with all our heart and offer to do what He requires, we should be prepared to accept the fact that man is a divine idea—God's spiritual reflection. Our purpose, then, is to mirror the facts of Truth, to be blessed by the Christ. When we accept our role on these terms and reflect the specific aspects of Truth we are being called upon to express, the answer that will bring the greatest blessing to the human decision will come to light. But it is not because Principle has recommended a particular human direction and wants us to take that way. The most appropriate answer appears because frigid human uncertainties melt when confronted by Principle. What is left is a measure of certainty and assurance, wisdom and perception.

On that basis, then, we are able to move forward with confidence. The most important victory that has been won, however, is something other than having selected a proper human footstep. The victory is in having conquered a measure of the belief that God knows mortal circumstances and that man is separated from the continuity of perfection. Regardless of the challenge we may be facing, there exists a specific aspect of perfection that requires man's conformance. It is a spiritual truth that God is requiring of us. When we yield, then harmony comes to the situation. There may be a very specific step that will prove best; but we reach it, not by focusing primary attention on the alternatives, but by understanding the allness of Principle.

As we grow into a fuller understanding of man's relationship to God, we will more and more want to do what God wants us to do. We will step by step shed the limitations of mortality and awake to our complete and conscious relationship to Principle. Gradually we will outgrow the belief that God would cause us or even allow us to be faced with anything less than the certainty of perfection.

Nathan A. Talbot