Meeting Our Human Needs and Our Greatest Need

We are born needy of so many things. When we were babies, we needed milk and the care of our parents. We were so helpless as infants and babes. As we grew up, we needed more than milk and the care of our parents, we needed solid food, clean water, clothes, toys to play with, then primary education, elementary education, high school education, college education, and postgraduate education for some. Our parents worked hard to meet these needs when we were children and youth under their care.

As human beings, we have physical, psychosocial, and spiritual needs: the need for safety, belongingness, education, esteem, self-fulfillment, and self-transcendence. We never stop needing food and water, rest and sleep, clothing and shelter, food for the mind, and more deeply, we have spiritual needs. We feel the need to know the reason for our existence here on earth, and we need to connect with the One who brought us into existence.

Our deepest need is for love and for meaning. We need to have meaning for our existence. We need love, we need belongingness. We also need to engage in community. We need a community that is peaceful, clean, sustainable, livable, green, and happy. As we grew up into adults, we searched and strived to meet both our physical and higher needs. We have individual and collective needs as human beings. We all need to grow into all that we can be. We all need to love and be loved. We all need to transcend our egos and work for the welfare of all.

Most of all, our greatest need is the need for eternal life and it is God who can meet this need. By whatever name we give God, He is willing to share His life with those who believe into Him and have personal, loving relationship with Him.

In Christianity, we see this need met by Jesus who said: “If anyone believes into Me, out of His innermost beings shall flow springs of living water.” Speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus said that the water He shall give the woman can quench her thirst and she will not feel thirsty anymore. Jesus is referring here to the eternal life He can give to anyone who believes into Him and prays to Him. This eternal life is His very own divine life which He is willing to give to those who come to Him and become intimate with Him.

Thus, our greatest need is the need for communion with God and with our fellow human beings. As we receive the gift of eternal life from God Himself, we become one with Him and with each other and we realize that we are all connected with the life of God.