Article October 12, 1981 Issue

Wise parents pray for their children

KATHRYN J. DUNTON

Our role as parents is sometimes like that of a gardener. Our children could be likened to exquisite flowers placed in our care to nurture and love. What is the true nature of these very special flowers? Each child, like each adult, is in truth the image of God. Children, as His ideas, are perfect and complete now, since God is so. Mrs. Eddy writes, "Spirit, God, never germinates, but is 'the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.'" Science and Health, p. 546. The same is true for our children. They are not becoming mature ideas; spiritual sense informs us that they already are God's wonderful, radiant, ageless ideas.

As we perceive this truth of our children, we break the stereotypes of terrible twos, feisty fours, tempestuous teens. Start with the true idea of their identity, and they will be released from limited mortal belief.

While parents can know the truth of their children's nature, they don't create their children's real identity any more than a gardener creates his roses. Mrs. Eddy says, "God's children already created will be cognized only as man finds the truth of being." Ibid., p. 69. All of God's children are perfectly formed and include vitality, joy, love, spirituality, intelligence, and calmness. Anything not good is no part of the child of God and must be weeded out. However, a parent must be prudent, not pulling out wheat along with tares. Weeding out disobedience, he doesn't want to eliminate the wheat of joy or vitality. Patience is sometimes required in order to see whether a quality is Godlike or a counterfeit.

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