True Vision

[Written Especially for Children]

JEANNE MARIE ROE PRICE

A little girl and her mother were out walking one day. After they had gone a short distance, they came upon a place where some broken glass of many colors lay scattered about. The little girl stooped down and picked up some of the pieces.

"Oh, Mother," she laughed, putting a fragment of blue glass to her eyes, "I see a blue world!"

"A blue world?" replied her mother. "Try the brown glass and see what kind of world you have then."

"Oh," cried the child, "it's brown! Let's try all the colors!"

Pink glass revealed a pink world; green glass, a green world; dark red glass, a dark red world.

"Of course," said the little girl thoughtfully, "there are not really many kinds of worlds—it's just the way I'm seeing them. I suppose if there were a crooked glass, I'd see a crooked world."

"Yes," her mother answered, "and if there were a sick glass, you'd see a sick world. That's one of the greatest lessons that all of us must learn—always to see aright, even though our human vision would present evidence to the contrary. For if our mental vision is dark and clouded, dim with sorrow, hate, or fear, we see a clouded, unhappy, fearfilled world. But if our vision is clear and bright, radiant with love and joy, we see a world of that kind.

"Look at me through your bits of colored glass and see if I change color."

"Yes," said the child, "you do."

Then lovingly and thoughtfully, because there was great respect between the two, they talked over some of the lessons they both had learned in the Christian Science Sunday School; of how Christian Science, or the understanding of God, helps those who follow its teachings to gain that clear, true vision which enables one to see, as God sees, the perfection of man and the universe.

Sitting down on a smooth, grassy spot, the mother read to the little girl from the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, the statement (pp. 476, 477): "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."

"Had Jesus seen man as lame, sick, blind, deformed, or dead, he would never have been able to heal the sick," explained the mother.

God, good, is ever present and all-powerful. With us everywhere, at all times, and under all conditions are God's unfailing love and protection, His infinite wisdom and guidance.

" 'Open Thou my eyes that I may see' is a good prayer for all of us, I think," said the little girl.

"Yes," replied her mother gently, "and true prayer is always answered."

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