On our life journey, we sometimes find ourselves grappling with loss. It’s a universal experience, one that touches each of us in different ways. Whether it’s the small items that can so easily slip through our fingers or the deeper connections and aspects of our lives that we hold dear, loss has a way of shaping the limited and limiting human experience that we mistakenly think of as reality. It sure seems as though something has been subtracted from our experience. We no longer have that valued thing. 

But the Bible’s book of Ecclesiastes lays out the following law regarding reality, which is wholly spiritual: “I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it” (3:14). This indicates that everything in the universe of God, Spirit—the only true universe—is complete and perfect. It’s totally good, and nothing can be added to or subtracted from it.

To understand this concept of present completeness, it is helpful to consider how mathematics works. Counting is an important skill. When my preschool granddaughter is practicing counting, she often, for some reason, leaves out the number 6, and as she goes higher, she skips 14. But despite this, those numbers can never actually be lost—6 is always between 5 and 7, and 14 is always in its right place as well, because numbers are not things but ideas. Under divine law, not one necessary concept or essential quality can ever be misplaced or lost. It is always where it needs to be in order to perform its rightful function.