'Under the shadow of the Almighty'
I think the reason my sons rolled over in their cribs was to gauge the distance between the crib and the door and estimate how long it would take to get out! The answer is about 18 years, but a lot happens on the way. For me, that was where Christian Science came in and the 91st Psalm became my friend. If a psalm could wear out, this one would be threadbare; I’ve spent so much time with it.
But it’s durable. Its theme is wonderfully large: God’s protection of us, and His promise always to be there, whether we think we are in trouble, or getting sick, or facing any kind of foe.
Asked by a newspaper reporter, “On what is Christian Science based?” its discoverer, Mary Baker Eddy, replied, “I can tell you on what I based my conception of religion and on which, so far as in me rests, I have laid its foundation in Christian Science: The Ten Commandments, The Ninety-First Psalm, The Sermon on the Mount, The Revelation of St. John the Divine” (Yvonne Caché von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck, Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer, Amplified Editon, pp. 203–204).
One night in particular, I saw this psalm’s central place in Christian Science. One of our young sons had fallen out of bed. Although there was no visible sign of injury, he was still crying after being soothed, prayed for, and tucked back in, so I called a practitioner. She agreed to pray for us.
Mary Baker Eddy’s “Mother’s Evening Prayer” had always been a favorite in our house (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 207 ). Singing it to my son and to myself that night was when I first noticed how it goes hand in hand with the 91st Psalm. “Thou Love that guards the nestling’s faltering flight!” made me think, “He shall cover thee with his feathers.” “No snare, no fowler, pestilence or pain; / No night drops down upon the troubled breast,” helped me remember that “thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness.”
I felt as if the hymn and the psalm were both talking to me at once. It was all about God’s complete protection of this little one. By the time I got to “When heaven’s aftersmile earth’s tear-drops gain, / And mother finds her home and heav’nly rest,” my little boy was asleep. He sighed comfortably, rolled over, and stretched his arm in a way that showed me no bones were broken. I was confident that the healing was underway. A short time later, he was leaping into a pond and splashing with his brothers, with full freedom of movement.
That experience reminded me that healing comes from understanding more about God. As Mrs. Eddy put it, “In conscience, we cannot hold to beliefs outgrown; and by understanding more of the divine Principle of the deathless Christ, we are enabled to heal the sick and to triumph over sin” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 28 ). Singing with that hymn, “ ‘Lo, I am with you alway,’—watch and pray,” helped me outgrow the belief that harm could come to this boy, and the psalm chimed in with “he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone” (verses 11, 12 ). Or thy shoulder against the floor. I felt that the Christ had spoken to me as surely as it had to the Psalmist.
I saw the 91st Psalm's central place in Christian Science.
That holy moment stayed with me, and the understanding was there for the next adventure. My oldest son was set to go on a fifth-grade camping trip. A boy in his class was suspected of injuring another boy in a fight at recess. His family denied it. The injured boy’s family withdrew him from the school. The aggressor then turned his attention to my son with threats and pranks. His father was to be a chaperone. Fellow parents asked me if I was really going to send my son on the trip. But he wanted to go. It seemed wrong to tell him he wouldn’t be safe. Instead, we started learning the 91st Psalm by heart.
Our son might not have gotten all the way through the psalm, and I wasn’t feeling very brave, when he set off. No phone calls would be allowed between parents and kids for five days. That was how I came to know and love verses 9 and 10 : “Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.”
I thought about what a habitation is. I imagined God watching over the people who first sang that psalm as they slept in their tents, perhaps in deserts, perhaps encamped before a battle. It occurred to me that tents don’t have addresses. But God knew where each one was. And they knew that He knew. They had put themselves in His shadow. His knowing and their trust was their habitation—their location and their safety.
That was how it was for me and our son. I was in a little suburban house; he was in a cabin full of fifth-graders by a lake. But I had made the Lord my mental habitation. No plague of fearful thought and wrong identification of a child of God—as bully or as target—could come near my mental dwelling. That dwelling included our son.
He returned safe and sound. One night, he reported, the troublemaker had gone around the cabin waking people up and challenging them to wrestle with him. But, said our son, “He forgot to wake me up.”
That fall, there was another camping trip, only this time their teacher would be staying with the class in the cabin, which sounded safe to the point of coziness. Still, I prayed. Why miss another session with the psalm? When our son returned, he told us the trip had been “Great, just like the trip last spring.”
Our third son wanted to major in film. He was admitted to his first-choice college, but in the environmental engineering department. He decided to go there anyway. One day of environmental engineering convinced him to submit a portfolio to the film department. His brother and his dad helped gather digital examples of his work. My job was metaphysical support.
This time verse 14 of the psalm came to the rescue: “Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.” I remembered that my son had indeed set his love on God. He had asked Him where to go to college, and this was the answer he had received. And he was “set on high.” He was admitted to film school the next afternoon.
Psalm 91 has already taught me my next lessons about raising children. One: when they finally get out the door, they’re still in your “dwelling” with God. And two: you need never be a helicopter parent with the rotating worry of mortal fears. Much better to let God hover over them with that mighty wing of His.
