At a swimming pool recently I noticed a tiny child at the edge of the shallow end, looking down at his mother, who was standing in the water. The mother opened her arms wide, and the child, with a yell of glee, jumped into them. The mother hugged the child, who, chuckling, held on, safely enjoying the water lapping around him. It was plain that the child knew his mother wouldn't let him go. I felt cheered to see such trust.

This small incident led me to reflect on the nature of true parenthood and to realize how much more we can trust our Father-Mother God than any fallible human parent to care for our needs and keep us safe. We all do have a wonderful Parent, the one God, the creator of all, who is tenderly and constantly holding every one of us in His love.

But, one might ask, how do we know we can trust God? Indeed, how do we even know there is a creator, if He is imperceptible to the material senses?

If God, the creator of all, were visible to the human eye as material and finite, He would therefore not be omnipotent and omnipresent. The Father of all would be fragmented and mortal, and creation would be divided into lots of little creations instead of being one whole.

Only infinite Spirit can be omnipresent, all-acting, the sole creator and governing power of the universe. And being infinite, Spirit cannot enter into the finite. The Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, states: "God is infinite omnipresent Spirit. If Spirit is all and is everywhere, what and where is matter? ... If Spirit were once within the body, Spirit would be finite, and therefore could not be Spirit." ^{Science and Health, p. 223.}

God, Spirit, has made His creation spiritual, eternal, and, as stated in the first chapter of Genesis, "very good." We all, as spiritual ideas, are made in the image and likeness of our Father-Mother God. When we look at creation from this standpoint—as spiritual and eternal, not finite or temporal—we begin to experience a rebirth in our thinking, a rebirth that is essential to an understanding of our oneness with our infinite creator. The divine demand on us is, in Paul's words, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate" ^{II Cor. 6:17.} —that is, yield up belief in life and intelligence in matter. The reality of existence is in God and God's spiritual creation alone. Seeing this, we begin to obey and honor our divine Parent. We find ourselves on the road of obedience to Jesus' admonition "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." ^{Matt. 23:9.}

Throughout the Old and New Testaments, the fact of God's ever-presence as infinite Spirit, the Maker of all good, is reiterated. There is, for example, a lovely verse in Isaiah that reads, "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." ^{Isa. 66:13.} This concept of the motherhood of God points to God as infinite, impartial, absolutely reliable divine Love, who feeds us, His offspring, His children, with the spirit of divine Truth and clothes us with the tenderness and inspiration of immortal Soul; always caring for us each step of the way. As Mrs. Eddy expresses it, "Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation." ^{Science and Health, p. 332.} Spirit, Love, Mind, has created infinite ideas, and the highest of these is man, the child of God, each individual's true identity. Our complete and perfect Parent could never produce anything less than spiritual offspring who are complete and perfect.

An experience I had some years ago illustrates the nature of God's "tender relationship to His spiritual creation." When I was a teen-ager I was stricken with a crippling condition in one leg. I suffered intense pain. My dad was a doctor. But being of the opinion that often nature was the best cure, he gave me no medication. For well over a week I lay helpless, my mother nursing me with a tenderness I will never forget. After about ten days, the pain faded away, and then I was able to walk, run, cycle, swim, and dance again. I forgot about this incident until, as a young adult, far away from home and living on my own, I was stricken again with pain in the same leg.

I had shortly before begun the study of Christian Science. I remembered with gratitude the tenderness expressed by my mother on the earlier occasion and felt that it had been in a degree a reflection of the ever-present tenderness of our true Mother, God. Now I prayed until I could feel the love of God, my eternal, ever-present Mother. Within a day the pain had completely disappeared. I was able to walk and move unhindered. And there has never been a recurrence of the condition. This healing was a proof to me that God is our ever-loving Parent, from whom we can never be separated.

Through prayer, and through the study and practice of Christian Science in daily life, we come to understand more specifically God's motherhood and fatherhood. The motherhood of God, omnipresent Love, wisely and inevitably corrects, protects, guards, and guides human thought as we grow spiritually nearer and nearer to God, the real source of being. In this ongoing process of regeneration and spiritualization of thought, we don't lose our true individuality but find it. And there is no end to the joy and tenderness that God's motherhood will unfold to us in the process.

Likewise in the case of the fatherhood of God, from whom we inherit all good, we know that as God's beloved children, we have this inheritance always with us. It includes a true sense of Life as God—and so as eternal, always active, radiant with energy and vitality. The book of Mark records Christ Jesus as calling God "Abba," ^{See Mark 14:36.} which is an affectionate term for "father" that children used in Bible times. It gives an indication of Jesus' complete confidence and trust in his Father's love. Not alone Jesus' many references to God as Father but his actions as described in the four Gospels show him to have been on intimate terms with God. The Master's example and teaching show us that we too can feel and know our native closeness to our divine Parent.

At one time our small son was sick and feverish. I had sat by his bed that morning, trying to pray—to feel some sense of God's healing presence—but anxiety had the upper hand. In the afternoon I had to go out briefly and so left the child with another adult in the house. As I walked along, I began at last to feel the effects of my prayer. I had based it on the Lord's Prayer, beginning with "Our Father which art in heaven." ^{Matt. 6:9.} In Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy the spiritual sense of that petition is captured in the words "Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious." ^{Science and Health, p. 16.} As I reflected on the meaning of these words, I saw that a child of our loving creator can express only harmony and perfection. I felt at that moment the love of God caring tenderly for His creation, including my son. I knew that the child was perfect because his creator was perfect and could sanction nothing less than perfect health. I was confident that the child's welfare was safe with God. Fear and anxiety had fallen away. I felt such a happy sense of peace that it was no surprise to me on my return home to find the child up, dressed, and playing cheerfully. All sickness and fever had disappeared. This was a further proof to me that "the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves." ^{Ps. 100:3.}

Such simple and comforting healings point to the vast possibilities of the Science of Christianity, whereby we can see that we are all members of one great family—the children of the one creator, the one Father-Mother, who dearly loves each one of us.