PLUM-BLOSSOM was a little Japanese girl ten or eleven years of age. Her parents had died when she was very young and she had gone to live with a married sister and her husband. They were not very kind to her, and as soon as she was old enough, she did nearly all the work of the house, and almost always had her fat, heavy, two-year-old nephew upon her back. In Japan babies usually spend many of their waking and sleeping hours strapped on the back of their mother, or an aunt, elder sister or nurse.
It was Lord’s day afternoon, but it brought no rest or joy to poor Plum-blossom, for she had never heard of the one true God or of the Lord Jesus Christ. As she walked along, her feet ached, and her face looked tired and sad. Suddenly she stopped, attracted by music. It was not a native instrument, but an American organ. There was singing too, and as the voices came through the open windows of the mission bungalow, she could hear every word.
“Jesus loves me, this I know,
For the Bible tells me so;
Little ones to Him belong,
They are weak, but He is strong.”
Jesus! She had never heard that name before. Who was He, and where did He live? Why did He love some people? No one loved her, except perhaps the baby. As she stood there, the door opened, and the boys and girls came out. Among them she saw her friend, Pine-leaf, and asked her, “What has been your honorable employment? Is it a school, and are you forced to go?”
Pine-leaf replied: “Honorable Plum-blossom, it is a school, but we do not write and work sums; we sing, and Miss White, the English lady, tells us such beautiful stories from the Bible. We do not pay anything, for the class is free. Won’t you come next week with me?”
Plum-blossom did not tell her sister and brother-in-law, but when the next Lord’s day came, and her sister told her to take the baby out in the sun, she needed no second bidding. She was at the appointed place, and Pine-leaf was waiting for her. There were about twenty children present, and they all sat on soft mats. The hymn was:
“I am so glad that our Father in heaven
Tells of His love in the Book He has given;
Wonderful things in the Bible I see,
This is the dearest, that Jesus loves me.”
“All about Jesus and love again, what can it all mean?” thought Plum-blossom. Then the children covered their faces with their hands, for Miss White was speaking to Someone they could not see, and Plum-blossom thought the lady seemed so sure that He could hear. After the prayer came the Bible lesson, a talk about the love of God in the gift of His Son, and though Plum-blossom did not understand all that was said, her heart opened to the gospel message, and before many months had passed she was able to say: “Now I have found a Friend, Jesus is mine!”
The missionary took a great interest in her new pupil, and went to see her sister, but her visit was not welcomed. She did not think she should go again, for it would only make Plum-blossom’s life more trying and difficult.
Then when Plum-blossom was fourteen there came a sad day when her brother-in-law told her he did not intend to keep her any longer, and she was not to go to school or see her missionary friends again. In a few days he would make her marry an old man, who was a heathen and a drunkard. She knew that as a Christian she could never be happy as the wife of such a man, and after prayer for light and guidance, she left her home, never to return to it. She went to her friends at the mission station, and after telling her story, begged them to shelter her. A few hours later she was engaged by the wife of a missionary as nurse to her children.
There, loved and valued, she found a really happy home, and when four years later she left it, it was to be the wife of a native Christian schoolmaster, and with him she began to work for the Lord in the capital of Japan. There she has her own Sunday school class, and loves to tell others the glad tidings that brought joy and peace to her own soul.
Now may you too, dear reader, come to trust the Lord Jesus as your own Saviour, like little Plum-blossom did. He died on the cross and shed His precious blood to redeem you. Through Him God now offers eternal life as a free gift, and you can have peace, pardon, happiness and the assurance of one day going to heaven to be with Jesus forever. But you must accept Him by faith into your heart, or all is in vain.
ML-01/17/1960