Every gardener knows that to remove a weed, you have to get to its root. Just cutting off the top doesn’t eliminate the weed or its damaging effects. So it is with any problem. In order to fully resolve the issue, you have to discern and extract the root—the problem behind the problem. 

Case in point: Years ago, a roommate and I had lived in an apartment for a week or so without furniture. We both had entry-level positions with low salaries and were waiting for our first month’s paychecks just to buy beds. One Saturday morning, after another night sleeping on the floor, it dawned on me that turning to God might bring a solution. Was there something I could know about my creator, some spiritual truth I needed to understand, that would change my thinking and therefore my experience? Was this a financial problem or was it a metaphysical—a theological—one?

I had learned from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy that our need is always to better understand God and our relation to Him. Science and Health says, “God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love” (p. 465). I turned my thought to infinite Mind, and in that moment it became very clear to me that I could fully trust that our heavenly Father-Mother, divine Love, was able to bring forth immediately all that I needed. It was possible. I recognized that infinite Love has unlimited resources and is continually blessing each of us as God’s loved child. As I saw this, my perspective shifted from reliance on a limited, material basis to a greater acceptance and understanding of divine Mind’s infinite possibilities. It was as though a light had been turned on in a dark room, and the light had a direct effect on my outlook and experience.