WHEN I WAS a boy my father was a missionary among the natives in the West Indies. I remember well how I once tried to teach an aged Negro how to read. It was a hard and tiresome task and it took a long time. But finally we got along so far that the old man, by following each line with his finger, was able slowly to spell out the words.
“Now I can read, now I can read!” he kept crying out, and we could hardly get him to say anything else.
Now since he had learned to read he must also have something to read. So he asked my father for a Bible. To my great surprise, my father refused to give him a Bible for nothing. “You must give something for it,” said my father to the old man. “You will appreciate it more and read it all the more diligently, if it costs you something. You go and think about it, what you can give for a Bible.”
The poor old man reflected long and earnestly on the difficult proem. He had no money and he did not know how he could get enough to buy a Bible. The only thing he owned was a hen. She was his pet and was good company for the lonely old man. However, after considerable reflection, he came to the conclusion that he would give up his valuable pet for the still more valuable Bible.
So one day he came to our house with the hen carefully tucked under his arm. My father was busy writing when suddenly he was disturbed by a cackling and flutter of wings. At the same time he heard a voice calling anxiously: “Take it, take it! Quick, quick, dear Sir; give me a Bible.”
My father took the hen and gave him a Bible, so the matter was settled. But the incident made a deep impression upon me. The old gray-haired man had gone to so much trouble to learn to read, and now he had given up about all that he possessed — even his only hen — for a Bible. Would I have done that? Would you?
Well may the story of the old native, of his eagerness and patience in learning to read, stir up the hearts of both reader and writer alike, to value the inestimable treasure that God has given us in the Holy Scriptures.
ML-01/17/1971