Article March 18, 2002 Issue

Being safe

By Shirley Paulson

DALE WAS IN MY CLASS AT SCHOOL , and we were all scared of him. Even the teacher knew he did mean things to everybody around him, and so his desk had to be right by her desk. If kids got too close to him, he would just punch them. My best friend, Kay-Kay, got hurt when Dale stepped on her shoelace and made her fall. My friends and I kept sneaking looks at him, especially during recess, to see if he was going to hurt someone. But I started wondering about something I was learning in Sunday School. I knew there was a kind of armor you could put on that was so strong that nothing could get through it. Dale couldn't punch through it, and his bad words couldn't even hurt my feelings.

I learned that good thoughts were the armor. This came from an idea Mary Baker Eddy had about being completely protected. She said, "Good thoughts are an impervious armor; clad therewith you are completely shielded from the attacks of error of every sort" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 210).

So I kept wondering if good thoughts would really protect me from getting hurt by Dale.

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