The first time my twelve-year-old son Nathaniel was selected to give a speech at his school before teachers and other students, he phoned me at work afterward and said that they had laughed at him. He was very troubled and sad about this. 

I started praying with the spiritual fact that man is made in the image and likeness of God, as the first chapter of the Bible tells us. I assured my son that, as God’s reflection, he could say only what God was causing him to say and that nothing about God’s perfect likeness is unfit or deserves to be laughed at.

I reasoned that God, the one Mind, knows and conceives only good, so only thoughts and actions that are intelligent, kind, and loving proceed from this Mind. Nathaniel and all the members of the audience were actually being governed by the divine Mind. Lifting my thought to the allness of God, good, brought the assurance that Nathaniel was loved and appreciated, so the laughter was a non-event.