[Written Especially for Young People]

Doors

The nursery door swung gently open as a light breeze swept through the hallway. A baby girl looked up from her toys on the floor, then scrambled to her new-found feet and toddled over to see what this meant. She was beginning to learn about doors. There was another one open just across the hall, revealing all sorts of interesting things which she wanted to explore. After gazing a few moments, she took some unsteady steps across the passage and had almost reached the sill when the door was quickly, gently closed. Baby stood in surprise, not very well pleased, then turned up the hall, where the open front door gave a view of the big world outside, and with a glad little shout she pattered that way as fast as she could go. But, strangely enough, that door, too, was closed just before she could get to it. This time she cried a little in her disappointment, but the door did not open. So she trotted back to the nursery, and was soon absorbed in her toys. After a while, the same loving hand that had closed the doors on adventures too big for this baby girl, led her out another way into a beautiful garden, where she played all day, quite safe and perfectly happy.

Has one of the larger children perhaps had some plan open to his thought like a door through which were glimpsed attractive and interesting possibilities, and started to follow this course only to have the door swing shut? Perhaps the plan was a party or a picnic; and then a rainy day changed it all. Perhaps he had a right desire to earn money in vacation time to help with the expenses of schooling; and then the work was given to someone else. Or he may have had the loving wish to do someone a kindness, but found, to his hurt surprise, that it was not wanted. Such experiences as these are very like having a door shut just as one is about to step over the threshold, and quite as unwelcome. What shall one do? Crying with disappointment, being sorry for one's self or angry with someone, will not open the door. Pushing against it in stubborn self-will is not apt to open it; or, if it does, this same self-will takes all the pleasure out of things. What is best to do?

Christian Science shows us how to let God do the planning and open the doors; yes, even shows us how to be glad when doors are closed, because we know that divine Love is only shutting up the wrong way, the way in which we might meet dangers and difficulties which we are not yet wise enough to overcome. Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, who loved children as Jesus loved them, and who has done so much to make this world a safe and happy place for them, gives these wise, helpful, and comforting words to all of us who, like the baby girl in the nursery, are wanting to launch out on great adventures: "Working and praying with true motives," she says, "your Father will open the way;" and again: "Love inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way. Right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 326, 454). What are these true and right motives? Loving, generous, unselfish thoughts, thoughts that take into consideration other people's wants and needs as well as our own. We need to remember that God's will is the only will that is big and wise and loving enough to see what is best for all of His children. However sure we may be that our wish or our plan is a good one, we all must admit that we cannot see very far as to how it will affect others in its carrying out, and whether or not it will do them good. So the safe, wise way is to consult with God about it, with divine Love, the Father-Mother of us all, saying, "Thy will be done," and to be truly willing that the wrong doors may be shut.

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February 21, 1931
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