PARENTS the world over pray for their children; some pray to idols, some to spirits, some to a corporeal god, and others to the one God, infinite Spirit. Parents who are studying Christian Science pray to God as the one divine Mind. Then they pray to realize that man is idea, an image in Mind, and not a mortal, as he seems to be. In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 465), "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love." From this basis, the parents learn that since God is infinite Mind, there is nothing outside His infinitude, nothing but God and His idea, His perfect creation. Thus in praying for a child, parents can do so with justified confidence in its well-being and safety, for they see it in relation to God, as a perfect and eternal individual being, dwelling in divine Mind. Parents learn in Christian Science that the real Father and Mother of children is God.
After referring to the Biblical account of the creation of woman from the rib of man, and to the later change whereby man is born of woman, Mrs. Eddy writes (ibid., p. 529), "Another change will come as to the nature and origin of man, and this revelation will destroy the dream of existence, reinstate reality, usher in Science and the glorious fact of creation, that both man and woman proceed from God and are His eternal children, belonging to no lesser parent."
Recently the writer saw the picture of a small dory with the name "Mom's Worry" painted on the side. While she appreciated the humor of it from a young person's or from a father's standpoint, it conjured up the scene of a worried mother anxiously awaiting the return of her family from a boating or fishing trip. This only served to remind her of the debt of gratitude she owed to God for Christian Science, which had prevented her from constantly entertaining a sense of anxiety for her family.
Through the revelation that man is a child of God, the burden of fear and false responsibility is lifted from parents. They can then allow children to participate freely in all right activity without fear for their safety. Whenever children start on a journey or take part in sports, for instance, these parents look to God and acknowledge His harmonious government and inexhaustible love for all His ideas. And they teach their children the truth of their identity as ideas in infinite Mind.
Parents who know that their children have embraced the teachings of Christian Science feel confident of their stability when the time comes for them to go to college or to serve in the Armed Forces. The parents know that the spiritual groundwork laid in the Christian Science Sunday School, the example of parents in the home, and the children's own study of the Bible and the writings of Mrs. Eddy will keep the young people from straying into unworthy activity and behavior. Governed by divine Principle, they will find companions who are also maintaining a high standard of thinking and conduct.
Parents teach their children that if, on occasion, they find themselves surrounded by individuals whose behavior is questionable, Mind will guide them not to condemn the others but to see them in the right perspective, as children of God. Their understanding of Truth will keep them mentally alert and immune to suggestions of error, strengthen them in a quiet refusal to indulge in wrong practices, and enable them to be an example which will earn the respect of others and influence them in the right way.
Parents who have learned how to pray in Christian Science are fortified by their spiritual understanding of God and man when the time comes for young people to marry and leave the home permanently or when perhaps their work takes them far from the parental roof. The parents understand that because God is all-inclusive and man is His idea, at one with God, every idea is forever embraced in the infinitude of Mind, so that in truth there can be no separation.
Sometimes children have to be brought up by the mother alone. Then her prayer rises higher still in the acknowledgment that her true being includes the masculine qualities of intelligence, wisdom, fearlessness, and strength. If it is the father who assumes the responsibility, he learns that he reflects not only masculine qualities but also the qualities of God's motherhood, which include joy, purity, holiness, beauty, and love. This acceptance of completeness by either parent helps to stabilize a home so that the child feels the absence of one parent less keenly.
But whether alone or together, it is important for a father and a mother to establish a closeness with a child in the early years. If a parent waits until his child is nearly grown before cementing a bond of trust and affection between them, it is often too late to do so, for by then the child has formed its own habits of thinking which may not necessarily be in harmony with those of its parent.
Where there has not been an interchange of love and understanding, parents may feel more widely separated from the child who sits in the same room with them than from one who is possibly thousands of miles away but who is close to God and to them in thought.
How should parents pray when, in spite of their teaching and example, a young person seems to resist parental supervision? They can persist in seeing their child as an idea in divine Mind and not as a wayward mortal. They can be more diligent in their study and application of Christian Science and in their prayer to see their child as dwelling in infinite Mind, expressing Truth's wisdom and intelligence, Principle's order and harmony, Soul's love, beauty, and peace.
In job (33:27-30) we read: "He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; he will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light. Lo, all these things worketh God oftentimes with man, to bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living."
In Jesus' parable of the prodigal son, the unstable son found his way back to his father's house;and if a young person seems to stray momentarily from the good he has been taught, the parents' thought, holding steadfastly to the truth that the child can never be separated from divine Love, will often help him to return to his early teaching. No idea of God can ever fall from its high place in infinite Mind. God does not give His child the freedom to err, for God's idea can never stray from the radius of infinite Mind.
Parents can know that right where the claim of an erring mortal seems to be, there is the presence of God and His perfect idea. In "Unity of Good," Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 64), "Mortals may climb the smooth glaciers, leap the dark fissures, scale the treacherous ice, and stand on the summit of Mont Blanc; but they can never turn back what Deity knoweth, nor escape from identification with what dwelleth in the eternal Mind."
As parents hold to the spiritual fact that God is the only real consciousness and that a child reflects only this consciousness, their prayer will be like that of the Shunammite mother, whose story is related in II Kings. The material picture was dark indeed, but when she was asked (4:26), "Is it well with the child?" she answered with sublime faith in God's all-power and unfailing presence, "It is well."
