"SUSAN LEARNS THAT LOVE PROTECTS" (For Children)

For several months Susan's family had been planning a vacation camping trip. Susan
wanted to take souvenirs back to her friends; so she had been saving all the money
she earned doing chores for her mother. After the coin bank overflowed, Susan's
mother exchanged the coins for dollars which Susan kept in a small red billfold.

On the Saturday afternoon before they were to leave on the long-awaited trip, Susan's
brother, Tim, had to play in a Little League game in a nearby park. Just before Tim
left, he and Susan had an argument. While his sister wasn't looking, Tim took the
billfold off her bureau and slipped out of the house.

He laid the billfold on the inside of the empty luggage rack that had been strapped to
the top of the family car. The rack provided no protection for such a small object, but
Tim expected Susan or their father to find the billfold quickly. Then Tim took the short
cut and walked to the ball field without telling anyone about the incident.

When Susan first missed the familiar red billfold, she thought she had mislaid it; so
she looked about her room. Then, in dismay, she hurried to her mother. "Mother,"
she exclaimed, "I can't find my money! Tim and I quarreled, and I believe he took it
to spite me!"

Susan's mother quickly reminded her of some of the truths she had been taught in the
Christian Science Sunday School. For one, she was bearing false witness against her
brother by seeing him as a mortal capable of revenge.

"As for your money," her mother added, "you've proven many times before that there's
nothing lost in divine Mind."

"I know," Susan replied. "But Tim knows where my money is. I'll go search his
room right now!" She rushed to Tim's room, but she failed to find the missing billfold.
By then she was angry and wanted to cry. Her father called out to her that it was time
to go to the ball field. Susan climbed into the back seat of the car, glowering so much
that her mother quickly explained the situation to Susan's father.

Suddenly a passage from Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, the textbook which is
studied, along with the Bible, by all Christian Scientists, including Sunday School
pupils, came to her thought (p. 386): "Error, not Truth, produces all the suffering on
earth."

This startled Susan into realizing that the reason she was miserable was that she was
letting error, mortal mind, tell her false things about herself and Tim. She stopped
then and declared to herself some of the truths her Sunday School teacher had taught
her.

Among these was the fact that God, who created all, made only good. She knew that
He had made man in His image and likeness and that her brother, Tim, was really that
likeness. She further declared that since Tim, like herself, was an expression of Love,
he could never do anything unloving or spiteful.

She remembered that Christ Jesus had gone about healing sickness and sin, always
loving others no matter how they treated him. One of Susan's favorite passages in
Science and Health was 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. Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and
that man is pure and holy."

After Susan had thought this over for a few minutes, she stopped worrying about her
billfold, and she realized that she didn't resent Tim's action anymore, either.

When they reached the ball field, Susan's father asked Tim about the money. A
moment later he followed Tim to the car, and there they found the little red billfold
lying on a metal slate on the luggage rack. Although the car had been driven at a
moderate speed down two steep hills and up three, the billfold hadn't fallen out.

Susan's father began to scold Tim for being so careless, but Susan spoke up, saying:
"That's all right, Daddy. Divine Love protected it."

Susan's family rejoiced together that Susan's billfold had been found. Her mother
said, "This reminds me of a passage in the Bible (Ex. 23:20), 'Behold, I send an
Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I
have prepared.'"

(Originally printed in the May 8, 1965 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel)