You Can Help The World's Children
MANY of us wonder what we can do to help children who are vulnerable to exploitation and harm in the world today. Cold indifference and outrage certainly won't solve the problem. But there is a special kind of action we can all take. Turning to God in prayer is the best way to start. How, after all, does He think about His children? We tend to think of a child as belonging to a certain set of parents or one parent or no parents. But all children really belong to God. In fact, everyone, in his true selfho od, is the child of God.
Christ Jesus said, as we read in Matthew's Gospel, ``Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." Therefore, God, who is Love as the Bible tells us, sees each one as His own tenderly loved and cared for offspring.
A Christian Science practitioner is someone who devotes full time to healing through prayer. Once when a practitioner went to visit friends, one of the family members saw him approaching the house and told the family he was coming. Their three-year-old girl knew that he was someone who did healing work. She jumped off her chair and ran to open the door. She immediately started to tell him that she had hurt her neck by falling off of a swing.
The practitioner was deeply touched by her sweet faith. She was clearly turning to God, all on her own, for healing. He felt God's love for that innocent child wash over him. He crouched down and talked to her as he felt divine Love envelop them both. After he left, the girl was well and started dancing and waving her arms around, which she had been unable to do before.
God's help was immediately available to the child, right where she was. The spiritual truths of God and man are available to us all--both adults and children. They enable us to be aware of the presence of God, who is the healer. That awareness lets the healing warmth of Christ, or Truth, into our lives.
When we need to understand God better, there is a book that throws light on the Bible's discussion of God. It is Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. In that book, Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, gives a more spiritual understanding of man's relationship to his ``one Father," God. She writes: ``This human sense of Deity yields to the divine sense, even as the material sense of personality yields to the incorporeal sense of God and man as the infini te Principle and infinite idea,--as one Father with His universal family, held in the gospel of Love."
Seeing others, then, in this spiritual light, helps to bring to earth the healing effects of such light. It regenerates the whole of human thinking and can have effects on the far side of the globe, as well as in one's own immediate experience.
We can be sure that God is right with each and every one of His children. In the Bible, the book of Isaiah compares God to a shepherd who watchfully cares for his flock. We read: ``He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.
Each individual prayer for children aids in the liberation of all children from the enslavement of ungodly thinking and acting. We can all act now to help bring peace and healing to the world's little ones. We can ourselves trust in God's presence, power, and care in all places of His creation. By our awareness of God's ever-present goodness, we can bring protection and healing to children everywhere.
