No fear

A spiritual look at issues of interest to young people

You can feel totally safe at school. If you have been afraid once in a while in the past, or even every day, there is a way of thinking that can help you and everyone at your school feel safer.

Well, it's praying, actually.

Feeling safe at school means having no fear at all. Feeling safe means being very well protected. Protection and safety go hand in hand.

But the best - the ultimate - protection doesn't come from people or weapons. It comes from a power that is always with you. When you discover this power for yourself, you will find more and more that it is the only power. This power is God. And to know God is to know real protection.

God is good. So good isn't just better-than-average power. Good is supreme power. God doesn't share power with anything. As far as God is concerned, there's nothing present but His goodness.

Knowing and feeling God's power is a way of praying.

It's what you are thinking that matters most. That's because your thoughts and your life are connected. When you're thinking a lot about the supreme power of God, there is less room in your life for anything that isn't good. For example, you can't feel the power of God's love and hate people at the same time. To know that God is the only power is to stop hating people. This is what protects you and prevents the people who think they're your enemies from hurting you.

Don't give other people the power to decide what you think about! If you get mad because of what someone else did, then you're letting the other person decide how you think. You're allowing the other person's behavior to control your thoughts. When you're angry, you lose.

You win by not allowing other people to decide how you are going to think. You win by acting on what God tells you instead of just reacting to what's going on around you. That's why thinking about God's goodness and power is a lot more worth your time than thinking about getting even is.

Once, a man named Jesus was threatened by a crowd of people who were really mad at him (see Luke 4:28-30). They grabbed Jesus and carried him away to find a place to kill him. When they got to a steep hill and were about to throw him off head-first, Jesus walked safely away from them.

He won. Even when it looked like Jesus wasn't safe, he was. He didn't fight those people. He didn't have to. Jesus must have been praying and feeling how powerful God is. The same God who was the only power in Jesus' life that day is the only power in your life today. You have the right to decide for yourself that good is supreme - no matter what anyone else says or does. What you think is your business.

Here are some more things worth thinking about: God and you are never threatened. Why? Because there isn't anything outside of God. God is Love. So you're never outside of Love. Love is always all around you and controlling you.

The Bible says that you live, move, and have your being in God (see Acts 17:28). When you remember this, you know that God's power is the law. And that means the end of fear and danger.

Is it hard to see and feel God protecting and controlling you? If you keep at it, your prayers will show that it isn't.

Mary Baker Eddy was the founder of The Christian Science Monitor. She wrote: "At all times and under all circumstances, overcome evil with good. Know thyself, and God will supply the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over evil. Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you" ("Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," pg. 571).

That word panoply means complete protection. It's like armor. Surrounded in the armor of Love, or God, you have real safety.

The Bible says, "He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust" (Ps. 91:4). Your best friend is God. And you can go to school feeling confident that you are always under His protection and forever in His loving care.

You can find other articles for kids in a magazine that comes out every week, the Christian Science Sentinel.

(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society