For Little Readers. (Gen. 37:3.)
ISRAEL, or Jacob, was the father of Joseph, and loved him very much. It seems he was fonder of him than of all his other children. Joseph was only a little boy when his brothers were grown quite big; he was the youngest in the family, except little Benjamin, and their mother died when he was a baby, so that their aged father thought a great deal of both of them, but Joseph most of all. And one day he gave him a coat, one “of many colors,” that he had made himself! The dear old man, that had been a shepherd almost all his life, working in the fields, and taking care of the cows, and goats, and sheep, he loved his boy so much that he must get pieces of stuff of every color he could find, and sew them together, to make a nice coat for him! I cannot tell you what colors they were; one of my little girls thinks there were “blue, and green, and tabby,” but I only know what the Bible says, that it was of “many colors.”
I wonder if you remember who made the first coat that was ever worn in this world. It was the great God Himself! He made one each for Adam and Eve, a coat of skin. Was He not kind? And it was when they had been naughty too, and had taken of the fruit He told them not! Oh, He is so good! None of us would ever, have had coats of any sort, if it had not been for His kindness to us.
When His dear Son the Lord Jesus was here in this world, He had a coat without seam, woven from the top throughout (John 19:23), but cruel men, when they put Him on the cross, took it from Him, and they were as unkind to Him as He had always been kind to them.
He has gone back to glory now; to heaven, to “prepare a place” there for me, and for you, if you believe in Him. And when He has come back and taken us to be with Himself, we shall see Joseph; and find that God loved him even more than Jacob did, and has made him to be much more beautiful in heaven than his coat of many colors was upon earth.
All the most beautiful colors are spoken of as being in heaven; and in the last chapter but one of the Revelation you may read of them in what John saw, when God was chewing him the “heavenly city” in a vision. It was something like a dream, but it was one that God gave him, and told him to write in a book, that we might read it, and know about what is to be when we have gone away from this world to be with Jesus. And it is all bright and beautiful there. The “colors” don’t fade up there. The clothes never want dyeing some other color, to make them look fresh again.
Some dear little girls and boys are so foolish as to want coats and frocks “of many colors” now, so as to look smart and fine; but when we think about how beautiful Jesus makes those to be whom He takes to heaven, we can be happy to be ever so plain here; content with any clothes He sends us to wear in this fading world, and wait for Him to come, and take us up there, where nothing fades or gets old. But I must stop now, or I shall not leave room for what some other friend has to say to you. Next month, however, I may have another word for you about Joseph.
W. T.