One Sunday during a challenging time in my life over twenty years ago, I was sitting in a Christian Science church service. As I sat there praying, I asked God, “What can I do to be more like You?” Instantly an answer came to my thinking: “Nothing.” My incredulous response was, “But I’m getting divorced,” which I then followed up with a laundry list of other reasons why that simple and short answer had to be wrong. I asked again, and God’s response was again immediate. I heard the calming “still small voice” (I Kings 19:12) say, “My work in you is finished. You cannot add to it or take away from it.”

What a milestone moment! I began to deeply ponder why this is true, despite the continual need we each have for spiritual growth. 

Christ Jesus said, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). And Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea,—perfect God and perfect man,—as the basis of thought and demonstration” (p. 259).