Article June 18, 1984 Issue

Preparing for motherhood

JENNIFER LEE HUFFMAN

Perhaps the finest gift we can give our children is to teach them that they are the eternal children of God. To daily affirm their heritage as beloved heirs of the Father-Mother God can bring out freedom and happiness not only in their lives but in ours as well. We give them this gift as we pray and understand that man has always existed, and that he will forever continue to be spiritual, the image of God, Spirit. Divine protection naturally is felt from this conviction of man's indissoluble link to the Father-Mother God.

In contrast, material belief continually stresses that man is mortal and must go through processes of birth, maturity, and death. Yet this is in direct opposition to the first chapter of Genesis, which states that man is created in God's likeness, complete, good, and eternal. Mrs. Eddy writes in the Christian Science textbook that "... the living and real prelude of the older Scriptures is so brief that it would almost seem, from the preponderance of unreality in the entire narrative, as if reality did not predominate over unreality, the light over the dark, the straight line of Spirit over the mortal deviations and inverted images of the creator and His creation."^{Science and Health, p. 502.} Because of the world's insistence that man is governed by laws of matter, it is vital for us to examine our thought to see that the real man, made by perfect God, predominates.

In the textbook the chapters entitled "Creation" and "Genesis" describe the spiritual concept of creation. They bring out that man neither originates in nor dies out of matter. God's creation is not dependent on physical structure or heredity; understanding that the divine Parent directly governs and maintains all His children frees us from fearful conditions that may seem very real. God also enforces His own law, which protects and glorifies all creation. The textbook states, "We leave this brief, glorious history of spiritual creation (as stated in the first chapter of Genesis) in the hands of God, not of man, in the keeping of Spirit, not matter,—joyfully acknowledging now and forever God's supremacy, omnipotence, and omnipresence."^{Ibid., p. 521.}