Children protected

Fear for our children and their safety can seem overwhelming. But it is helpful to know that no one is ever alone, because no one can be without the all-encompassing love of God, our Father and Mother. As Psalm 91 says, God is our “shield and buckler” (verse 4), and we all live “under the shadow of the Almighty” (verse 1).

When I was a very young child, my grandmother brought me to the nursery in the branch Church of Christ, Scientist, she attended, and later she enrolled me in the Sunday School. I remember learning that God loved me and everyone, and that He would always protect us. I learned, among other things, the Lord’s Prayer, the twenty-third Psalm, a children’s prayer titled “Mother’s New Year Gift to the Little Children” (see Mary Baker Eddy, Poems, p. 69), and the “Daily Prayer” from the Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy.  

One day when I was about eight years old, I was walking home from school. A car stopped, the driver asked me if I knew where a certain street was, and I pointed back down the road. The man asked me if I would show him. My father was a police officer, and I knew better than to get in the car with a stranger. But I was also very timid and had a hard time saying no to a grown-up. So I got in the car and rode with the man down to where the street was. He then turned the car around and stopped at a stop sign for what seemed a very long time.