Embracing the world’s children

A lighthearted and productive group of high school students had become moody and difficult to work with. At first, their teacher felt unsure what to do, and even a little afraid. However, as a student of Christian Science, she knew that prayer would not only free her from debilitating concern but also lead to a way to help these young people.

Christian Science turns thought to the one infinite God, good, and His ever-present law that governs all creation. This law is the foundation of the spiritual fact revealed in the Bible that each of us is created in God’s image – complete, spiritual, perfect – and that we reflect God’s power over all threats, discord, and affliction.

As my friend embraced the truth of the students’ spiritual nature as expressions of God, good, it occurred to her to listen to some of their favorite music. In doing so, she discovered that it focused on suicide. She prayed with strong conviction of the students’ inseparability from infinite God, divine Life, and the infinite good that divine Mind, God, unfolds. She saw that because of Mind’s infinitude, depraved influences could have no source, existence, or power.

Armed with this spiritual understanding, my friend assured them of their God-given authority over any influences that would threaten their well-being. As they glimpsed this, their joy returned almost immediately.

Jesus taught that children represent the qualities found in the kingdom of heaven (see Matthew 19:14). Through prayer we can protect young people by seeing them, and helping them see themselves, as whole, spiritual children of God, rather than vulnerable, immature mortals subject to danger and harm.

The spiritual nature of children is their one true identity. Like every one of us, as children of God, they are inseparable from their all-harmonious Father-Mother and can never be separated from Life – their true source of joy and peace. They are one with the divine Mind, whose wisdom leads to right decisions and fills consciousness with the recognition of ever-present good.

These guiding truths are a firm basis for trusting children to express their freedom from material laws and influences that would tempt dark thoughts and actions. There is nothing that can “separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39).

Christian Science, revealed to the world by Mary Baker Eddy, helps us to understand why unity with God – divine Love and Life – is always the reality. For instance, in the Lord’s Prayer, Christians pray, “Thy kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10). Christian Science advances the understanding of this thought to spiritually grasp the idea that God’s kingdom is come – that divine Life and Love are ever present (see Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 16).

How can we say that, given the influences and dangers that seem so prevalent? When we accept the ever-presence of God and His kingdom of infinite harmony, we inevitably understand the spiritual nature of all those in our thoughts – men, women, and children. Grasping this Christlike understanding of others and expressing it to those we encounter supports them in realizing their inherent desire to see goodness in themselves and others – and to act from that basis. In this way we can each increasingly realize that everyone is governed safely and harmoniously under the laws of divine Love.

As children of God, young people are free to exercise their divine rights – to express innocence, purity, health, and strength wherever they are. Armed with the consciousness of this dominion, they are invulnerable to harmful influences and dangers.

But what about the rest of us, if news of world events obscures our clearer view that all children are the children of God, safe and secure? Any temptation to fear that a material power or law exists that can separate God, divine Spirit, from His children is thwarted by the spiritual understanding that no other cause or creator exists but infinite God, good.

As we prayerfully embrace the world’s children with the spiritual facts – the truth of their being – as Christ Jesus embraced them, we are able to trust that their innocence and purity are permanent, always intact. This opens the way for each to discover for himself or herself the joy, peace, and dominion that are divinely theirs as a child of God.

Adapted from an editorial published in the Aug. 29, 2022, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.