Midmorning, due for a meeting, I found myself bent over in pain. Although I quickly found a quiet place to sit and pray, my first thoughts were desperate: I needed to be home with the Bible and Science and Health in order to pray properly; my husband should come fetch me; I would have to explain my sudden absence to my colleagues.
Almost immediately, though, I realized how unhelpful these thoughts were. Rather than predetermine my rate of recovery, I knew from past experience that I could turn to God right where I was for immediate relief. So I did. I began to think about how big God is, how much God loves me and everyone, and how I was safe in God's care. The pain, however, was pretty intense and the feelings of panic kept threatening to take over. Then came a very specific thought—a sentence from Science and Health, which I felt was a message from God: "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." Science and Health, p. 494. Knowing this message had come from God, I kept my thoughts still and waited to see what would come next from this gentle reminder.
Sure enough, a lovely idea came—to pay attention to the tense of the first part of the sentence. The sentence doesn't start off by promising that God will in the future meet every need. It says He always has. In other words, divine Love had already met my need, which at that moment was to be well, to express my God-given perfection as described in the first chapter of Genesis. See Gen. 1:26, 27. I didn't have to do anything. I was, in effect, already well.
