Helping our children grow
A Christian Science perspective: The more we recognize and celebrate the spiritual qualities children express, the more their God-bestowed nature will be revealed and their growth assured.
The weekly Metropolitan Diary in The New York Times has for many years offered heartwarming stories about the goodness shown by residents in their everyday lives in the Big Apple that is New York City. These first-person accounts counteract the disturbing crime reports (including school violence) on other pages and shine like a beacon of hope.
Last October, at the start of the new school year, a father wrote in the Diary about a note he and his wife had received from the teacher of the second-grade class their daughter had just entered (Oct. 4, 2013).
The note said, in part: “I want to thank you for entrusting your child to me. I’ll do my best to be your child’s companion in learning.... [I’d like to] help you recall the gentle spirit of your child. I will work alongside you this year to help your child grow.”
Could anything have brought greater comfort to those parents than that thoughtful note – just as an all-caring Father-Mother, figuratively speaking, sends home messages of hope and encouragement to all students of His Word?
Our children are always safe in the arms of the divine Parent, God, who established their pure innocence and budding promise in the first place, and into whose protective custody we can mentally place them at all times and in all circumstances. God’s angels are sentinels at every classroom door, constantly fulfilling their role as “the inspiration of goodness, purity, and immortality, counteracting all evil, sensuality, and mortality” (Mary Baker Eddy, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 581).
The more we recognize and celebrate the spiritual qualities children express, the more their origin and God-bestowed nature will be revealed and their growth assured. Their “companion[s] in learning” – angels, teachers, parents – will be at their side.
Christian Science points the way to an ageless maturing, in which children “become men and women only through growth in the understanding of man’s higher nature” (Science and Health, p. 62).
This growth takes place in the environment of God’s sturdy, enveloping love. Its expression is anchored in divine Principle and guided by the divine Mind that effortlessly blends strength with gentleness.
Viewed in this light, children, too, can play a key role in the spiritual growth of those around them. Their purity of thought and their innocence are a priceless model, as Christ Jesus affirmed when he welcomed young people into his presence and declared: “The Kingdom of God belongs to men who have hearts as trusting as these little children’s. And anyone who doesn’t have their kind of faith will never get within the Kingdom’s gates” (Luke 18:16, 17, The Living Bible).
Those gates are never locked. They yield easily to the touch of eager hands, in any grade you can imagine!
From an editorial in the Christian Science Sentinel.