I was walking with a friend who was in difficult circumstances. I had been in vain endeavoring to console him, when a little girl ran up to us, and asked if we needed matches.
“No, my child, we don’t smoke,” I replied.
The child was not to be put off so easily, but begged us pleadingly to take just one box, till I, at last, asked her what she did all day, and if she did not think of going home.
“O,” she replied, “I go to school all day, and I come here in the evening.”
“But do your parents not care for you?” I asked further.
“Father has left us, and mother is in bed sick.”
“And why do you come here, then?”
“I stay here till I earn 15 cents.”
“But you do not earn 15 cents every evening?”
“Yes, always.”
“And how much have you earned today?”
She did not seem inclined to say, but after more conversation, she timidly brought a few coins out of the pocket of her little cotton dress. There was in all 5 cents.
“Well, you will not gather 15 cents this day, I fear,” I said.
“Yes, surely,” was the confident awer. “I always earn 15 cents.”
“Then will you tell me, why you are so positive that you will yet earn 15 cents today?”
“Before I come here, I kneel at mother’s bed, and pray:” she answered hesitatingly. “Then mother says our Father will help me to earn 15 cents, and He has always done it.”
“You said before that your father had left you.”
“But do you not know that we have a Father in heaven?”
“Do you really believe that He hears you, when you ask Him for the money.
“Yes, certainly, for He has always sent it to me.”
“Now, what would you do, if I gave you 10 cents?”
“Run home to mother, because my Father in heaven has given me all that I asked Him for.” I need not add that the little one received the dime and trotted homewards overjoyed.
I turned round to my friend and said, “Here is a lesson for you,” and indeed he had received fresh courage from this lesson, and went on his way gladly.
The great enemy of our souls gives himself much trouble to make us believe, that it is specially hard for a soul to be saved. And yet nothing is more simple. We must just trust the Lord as this little child did. We only need to take God at His word. He has promised us eternal life, which His Son has purchased for us with His own precious blood.
God offers this eternal life to all who will receive it. He is a God who “cannot lie.” We have only to accept what He so freely offers us.
We need forgiveness for our sins. Jesus has died—the Just for the unjust—in order to gain this forgiveness for us, and God says that He will wash away all our sins through the blood of Jesus which was shed for us.
What can be more simple? Come with the faith of this little child in our story, accept the grace offered, and your sins will be blotted out forever.
O, that we all had this simple, childlike trust; how happy it would make us!
ML 09/28/1941