JOHN was a young boy who lived in Hampshire years ago and had a job of looking after sheep. Instead of going to Sunday school on Sunday mornings he herded his sheep, and got into the bad habit of spending the rest of the day in idling about the village with other young fellows. This not only led to his entirely neglecting to hear the Word of God preached, but to many evil ways beside.
But John’s heart was not at rest for he had been early taught to know better, and he went around with his companions with anything but a happy state of mind.
One Sunday morning, while up on the hillside, he happened to see a squirrel in a tree, sitting on a branch with his forepaws raised together before his little face, as squirrels do when eating a nut. John had been thinking over his evil ways and as he gazed up at the little animal it suddenly struck him that the squirrel was praying. Poor John was not well educated; however, considering that he had lived all his life time in the country, he ought to have known the habits of squirrels better than that to have made such a strange mistake.
But so it was, and it had a great effect on John. His first thought was, “How bad I must be. I never pray even when squirrels do!” All day long the thought still haunted him: “How bad I must be never to pray, when even squirrels do.”
Rounding up his sheep in haste, he hurried home, changed his clothes, and went at once to a place where he knew the gospel was preached. On his way he had to pass a group of his idle companions at the village corner. When they saw that he was dressed in his Sunday clothes, they guessed where he was going and began to taunt him, and to shout “Amen!” in chorus after him. But none of these things moved John. God was at work in his soul, and no amount of ridicule could force him from his purpose.
That night the Word of God proved “sharper than any two-edged sword” to him, and he went home under the deep conviction that he was a poor lost sinner, whom neither praying nor working could save. On the following Lord’s day he went again, and every Sunday he continued to attend, until his eyes were opened to see that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” and that “he that believeth on Him hath everlasting life.” Thus washed from his sins in the precious blood of Christ, which cleanseth from all sin, he was made happy in the Lord and from that time he led an entirely different life.
Anxious now for the salvation of others, he became a Sunday school teacher, and took a different job so that it would not interfere with his much loved work on the Lord’s Day. He found his new work much harder, but he was happy in it, and was greatly loved by his little class of Sunday school children. Once when he was laid aside by an accident, they all took up a collection and brought their pennies to help him in his need. He did not live many years, but he lived long enough to show what grace can do in most unlikely means. Long after he fell asleep in Christ, those whom he had taught in his class always remembered with thankfulness the “Squirrel’s Sermon in the Tree.”
ML-02/11/1973