What parent has not experienced a time when his or her child seemed to be threatened by some frightening situation? Just the thought of our children venturing out into the world may send us hurrying into the closet of prayer. Perhaps we find ourselves wishing we could somehow shelter and guide them forever. "He needs his mother" or "If she would only listen to her father," we think. And yet we can come to see more clearly that in truth the son is forever in the presence of his heavenly Mother, experiencing God's motherhood; and the daughter is never out of touch with her divine Father.
One mother who faced a terrible menace to her child was the mother of the baby Moses, born at a time when Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, had decreed death for every newborn Hebrew male. After three months, when she could no longer hide him, Moses' mother prepared an ark—a woven, basketlike crib—in which she placed Moses. She set the ark in the reeds near the river's edge.
Moses' sister remained at a suitable distance to watch over the little vessel. When Pharaoh's daughter came to bathe and found Moses, his sister was at hand to offer to find someone who could care for the child. So Moses was returned to his mother's care until it came time for him to live at the court of Pharaoh. See Ex. 1:15 , 16; Ex. 2:1–10.
What relevance does this story have for modern parents? Must we learn the art of "ark-making"? Well, yes, in a certain sense. Perhaps there is more to this story than a literal reading discloses. An insight into its useful spiritual significance can be gained from the Glossary of the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Here Mrs. Eddy gives an inspired meaning of ark, which reads in part, "Safety; the idea, or reflection, of Truth, proved to be as immortal as its Principle .... God and man coexistent and eternal; Science showing that the spiritual realities of all things are created by Him and exist forever." Science and Health, p. 581.
We begin to find the safety that belongs to the child of God—Love's own spiritual reflection, man—through a perception of our eternal unity with our divine Father-Mother, the unchanging Principle of being. This idea of spiritual sonship is the Christ, so perfectly understood and lived by Jesus.
Christ Jesus knew and declared his inseparable oneness with his Father. His ringing affirmation "I and my Father are one" John 10:30. aroused the hatred of worldly thought, but at the same time this understanding of his relationship to God saved him from destruction at the hands of hate. His prayer that begins "our Father" includes us all in this spiritual relationship to God. Man, the image of God, emanates from the Father and is never outside His infinite presence. While there do appear to be numerous dangers that humanity needs to be alert to, in reality man, God's reflection, is never exposed to or touched by danger, because he dwells forever in his loving source.
Parents yearn to ensure safety for their children. And protection for our children will be realized as we prayerfully acknowledge God's parenthood with an absolute faith, founded on our growing understanding of Him as the divine Principle, Love. Our parenting does not end with the realization of God as man's Parent but rather continues as an ever more perfect and effective human expression of God's fatherhood and motherhood.
We don't arrive at this spiritual standpoint without steadfastly maintaining in thought and prayer that God is the one genuine creator. The belief that we are creators, that man is the product of human conception, is a mistaken impression that can be overcome through a growing understanding and acceptance of the spiritual facts of man's origin as taught in Christian Science. As these teachings are steadfastly adhered to before, during, and beyond the event of a child's birth, we become aware of the child's true nature as a spiritual expression of God, who is creative divine Love.
Then human pride in an attractive child, for instance, can be replaced by gratitude for the child's Godlikeness. Heredity, the two-faced falsity that argues for the reappearance of good human qualities but also tries to convince us of the inheritance of negative mental or physical characteristics, can be reversed by our willingness to see our children as truly God's spiritual offspring, without a single mortal ancestor.
The truth of man's spiritual perfection is recognizable in the purity, innocence, and lovableness of an infant. But if, as our children grow, we allow the world's materialistic beliefs about children and childhood development to accumulate unresisted in our thought, these beliefs can become densely obscuring—like the sudden, blinding fog that came without warning one day when our teenage daughter was sailing with a friend.
They were in our small Sunfish sailboat, far out in open water. As my wife and I watched with binoculars from the beach, visibility was quickly reduced to twenty feet. The children seemed to be totally out of our reach. We did not know they had upset the boat while trying to turn around quickly toward land and had become completely disoriented after righting the boat and getting back aboard.
Panic began to asset itself both on the boat and ashore. Our daughter and her friend were out in waters frequented by speedboats. It was too late in the day for the fog to burn off. My wife and I mentally ran through a number of human means of rescue, none of which were practical.
Then we began praying, first dismissing both condemnation and self-condemnation. We knew we could depend on the truth of man's oneness with the Father Mind, and on His uninterrupted communication to His children. This was reality, and the acknowledgment of it dissipated the blinding, deafening fear the human picture presented.
Our daughter told us later that as she prayed also, a clear thought came to her, reminding her that the waves were going toward the shore. She followed them back to the beach, landing at the very point where I had decided to stand while I waited and prayed. A small thing, you say? Not to us, particularly in this coastal area where sailors and fishermen are too often lost at sea.
There have been countless times in our experience as parents when our hearts have ached to be at our children's side or somehow to be closer to them. But whenever we correctly identify the children as truly God's, the sense of distance has given place to a recognition of man's oneness with the ever-present Parent. And we have seen that their heavenly Father-Mother heals incisively, comforts and companions, and guides them safely through life.
As we acknowledge for ourselves and our children man's inseparable relationship to God, we are drawn closer together. Mrs. Eddy points to our unity in Love when, referring to gaining a more spiritual sense of God, she writes, "This human sense of Deity yields to the divine sense, even as the material sense of personality yields to the incorporeal senseof God and man as the infinite Principle and infinite idea,—as one Father with His universal family, held in the gospel of Love." Science and Health, pp. 576–577.
Our parenting does not end with the realization of God as man's Parent but rather continues as an ever more perfect and effective human expression of God's fatherhood and motherhood.
Our prayers for children can and must include the hungry, homeless, abused, abandoned, misguided—all the children of the world. We build this ark in thought as we weave our prayerful affirmations of our Father-Mother's love, and our inspired denials that man could ever be separated from his heavenly Parent, into a buoyant, spacious, all-inclusive refuge from stormy waters, sealed within and without with the impermeable ever-presence of divine Love. No one is left out of this ark.
