OBSERVE, dear young reader, how diligent the little girl in our picture is Without interruption she keeps her eyes steadfast on her work. It is only a little piece of work for her aunt to set a lamp or something else on, but it is to give joy to her aunt, and it is to give joy to herself also, therefore each stitch in it has to be taken with care, for no one could have pleasure in a faulty or unclean piece of work, be it for the schoolroom, house or business. Therefore each stitch had to be taken with care, for the whole work consisted of individual stitches.
It is well, to be employed; it is not good to be idle; idleness will lead to mischief, and, dear children, don’t think because you are children, your work consists only of play; it is a great mistake,
because children can be a help to father or mother, to themselves and one another; they can do useful things. Many a step they can save mother, even when they are quite small, and how much better to grow up a joy to your parents, rather than a grief.
Now, as the stitches in the work of our little girl had to be, each one, just so, to make it, when completed, a good work, so our lives,. if they are to be well pleasing to the Lord. Do not our whole lives consist of so many years, months, and days, yea each day of so many hours and minutes? Then if our whole life is to be pleasing to the Lord we must watch that we drop no stitches, that we do not soil or mar it.
I know well, children, that we cannot in our own strength live to God. We must first have forgiveness of sins and God’s Holy Spirit. Yet even then there has to be a continual watch set over our hearts, so sinful by nature, otherwise there will be failure upon failure. The Lord Jesus therefore tells us “Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.” “If ye love Me, keep My commandments.” Many are the warnings given us in God’s word like these, and is not this the only way to prove our love to Him, if we keep His word? It certainly is.
But you may say, “I am only a little child, and you cannot expect much from me.” This may be true, and yet children can go on in a God-pleasing way. Look for instance at Samuel. He pleased God when he was quite a little boy. Joseph is another; David also and Daniel and others. All these are proofs that children may g6 on in a pleasing way to God; and if you do, you may, like them, have to suffer for it, but how sweet will be the suffering. Such it was to St. ‘Paul, who said: “For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.”
Messages of God’s Love 3/22/1908