Infants are not helpless

The spontaneous gentleness one feels in the presence of an infant is, at least in part, a tacit recognition that love is the most natural and healthy environment for children.

God is divine Love, who creates and cares for all. To the degree that our tenderness for children is a conscious awareness that they are in reality God's offspring -- not feeble but mighty -- we will be able to help them through divine power to surmount the difficulties they sometimes face.

God's immortal children (and this includes all of us in our true nature) are sturdy beings, ideas of universal Principle. There is no ground for believing that some of God's creatures are stronger than others, so that a process called growth makes His offspring less vulnerable to evil. God cares for His creation with impartiality.

This fact is illustrated in the Bible story of Hagar the bondwoman. n1 She was ejected from her home with her infant son and sent into the wilderness with only some bread and a bottle of water. After all the water was used up she decided that death, at least for her child, was inevitable. She left him under a bush, walked away, and wept.

n1 See Genesis 21:9-20;

But "God heard the voice of the lad." An angel told Hagar not to be afraid but rather to "lift up the lad." She realized, then, that her child would not die. And "God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water, and she went . . . and gave the lad drink."

This and other instances related in the Bible of the protection of children from harm illustrates not the intervention of a supernatural power but divine Science, in effect now and always. Christian healing can be understood and applied today in behalf of children as well as adults, bringing the proof that God does hear the voice of all mankind.

A child's true nature is man.m He is a vulnerable and undeveloped mortal, subject to chance or hostile forces, but God's eternal image -- the image of perfection. God is infinite substance and Life, and His children -- all of us -- are substantial and full of life, always. Each of us has an immortal purpose. The concepts of birth, infancy, maturity, death, are mortal fabrications, immature misconceptions of true being. Hagar glimpsed this eternal, purposeful being when she saw God's love for the child.

There is good reason to be confident about our children's well-being. God meets their needs through the demonstration of His love. "The 'divine ear' is not an auditory nerve," notes Mary Baker Eddy. n2 "It is the all-hearing and all-knowing Mind, to whom each need of man is always known as by whom it will be supplied." n3

n2 Mrs. Eddy is the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science;

n3 Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,m p. 7.

DAILY BIBLE VERSE He forgetteth not the cry of the humble. Psalms 9:12