As we engage with people each day, we realize that everyone wants to be happy, to see their practical needs met, and to enjoy realized purpose. Everyone wants to have a safe and productive life. Humanity cherishes its right—often seen as only a hoped-for dream—to live life to the fullest. Yet, today many people feel under fire. In some cases they are literally in a war zone. In other cases, it’s because of health, housing, or education limitations, often seeming too complex and long-standing to solve. And reactions to inequity of opportunity often drive people to separate corners, ready to battle it out with a variety of opinions and competing plans.

As a student of Christian Science, I’ve learned that the opportunity to live freely and make progress is God’s plan for every man, woman, and child. God is the one, infinitely good Father-Mother who has loved each one of us into being. More than ever, these times call for unselfish prayer to realize that goodness is normal and provable for everyone, and that it’s not impossibly idealistic to expect opportunity to exist for everyone on the planet.

The reason we universally value opportunities is that we are each created to express the “producing, governing, divine Principle”—as the founder of this magazine, Mary Baker Eddy, describes God in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 81). The divine Principle does not fail to create opportunities for its ideas to be productive.