I would like to do something for the Lord Jesus!” said a little girl one day.
Mary had not long been out of the infant class in her Sunday school. Her parents were very busy people, who had very little time, so they said to think about God or God’s Word. Mary’s teacher in her new class had talked so earnestly and so plainly about serving the Lord Jesus, that the child’s heart was warmed with love to Christ.
“The Lord Jesus was so kind and good: I would like to do something for Him if I could!” Mary said to herself. She knew the way to please Him was to do something for others for His sake, and that day she had learned His words,
Her teacher had talked a great deal about these words, and Mary listened attentively.
“We all have our hands, with their ten fingers,” the teacher said. “Can we not find something they can do, for the kind Lord Who gave those hands to us?”
All that day Mary thought over the question, and for several days it was still on her mind. She had no money to give to the poor, and she had to go to school every day, and what with doing her lessons and the little household errands for her mother, she had not much time to spare.
“I expect I am too little to do anything for the Lord,” she said to herself, as she walked home one day from school.
It was very cold with frost and snow on the ground, but Mary did not mind the cold as her clothes were nice and warm. Just then she saw an old man coming tards her carrying a pail of water from the village pump.
He had been crippled in his youth, and had been obliged to hobble along on a wooden leg for twenty years. He was not a particularly pleasant old man, and the village children generally liked to keep, out of his way if they could. Today Mary could not help noticing how difficult it was for him to carry the water along the slippery road, and he could scarcely steady himself with his stick to keep the water from splashing over.
Mary thought this was just her opportunity, so she ran forward and offered to help him. She managed to hold the pail so steady, that the old man got on ever so much better. Each day on her way from school she stopped to fill the old man’s bucket with water, and helped him along with it. He soon began to look forward to her coming.
Mary had not forgotten her longing to do something for the Lord. This carrying of the water down the slippery road was a very little thing, but she thought to herself, if this old man belonged to the Lord, then she would be doing it for Him. One day she ventured to ask him, but the old man did not understand her in the least. He kept wondering and thinking over her words all the evening. He had a New Testament pushed away somewhere, and Mary’s words reminded him of what he had read there long ago. He had scarcely opened the covers of that book since he had been a schoolboy.
As he turned over the pages his eyes fell on words with a pencil mark against them, and these words were underlined,
Mary still came every day to carry the water for him, and the old man would get her to talk to him. She was delighted to repeat what she had heard the teacher say, and she told him all about her longing to do something for the Lord. She was so happy when the old man told her that he had now put his trust in the Lord Jesus, and that she had been the one used of God to lead his soul out of darkness into His marvelous light.
ML 05/08/1938