To know what God would or wouldn’t say to us, it is first necessary to know how God always communicates spiritual answers to a yearning heart. We may feel that we don’t see adequate answers to the challenges we face, and we may wonder how anything spiritual could do more than ease the stress of difficulties. But we can do more than just fondly hope that God unconditionally loves His creation and is always present as our help and support. We can know that God is present and communicates His goodness to all of us—His spiritual ideas—in ways that can be comprehended practically, solving problems of all kinds.
For instance, the biblical patriarchs expected to hear divine direction and to experience results that ran counter to human expectations. As a result of what they perceived of God’s assurances, they had remarkable experiences that did solve problems. And each of us also has the capacity to experience our own individual closeness to God, because God is always present, cherishing us in conscious love, and communicating to us the truth of our relation to Him.
Mary Baker Eddy clearly evidenced this in her life. She writes in many places of feeling the presence of Spirit, God, and discerning direction from God’s divine idea, the Christ. Some of her poems have lines such as, “Heard ye the glad sound?” (Poems, p. 75), “I will listen for Thy voice, / Lest my footsteps stray” (Poems, p. 14), and
