A little boy—Franky—as he was called, cut off the pretty curls which had clustered round his head, and had been his mother’s delight.
To punish him for his mischief, the family agreed to pretend not to know him when he came to the table at meal time. (I do not think they were quite right in this, but such was the case.)
“What strange boy is this?” inquired the father, as the boy extended his hand for a plate.
“Why, I’m your Franky, papa!”
“My Franky!” in apparent amazement. “Nonsense! you needn’t try any such game here! My Franky was a different boy.”
Surprised, but not abashed, Franky turned to his brother, but his brother heeded him not.
It was fun for him at first, but as he made requests of one and another, and found no one, not even his mother, knew him, his fair, sweet face grew sober and long. No one talked with or petted him they gave him his food in silence. Frank choked down his food—his face growing more and more pitiful every moment.
At last he could endure it no longer; he leaned back in his little high chair, and looked once again into each unanswering face; he saw no love, no recognition anywhere—he felt utterly alone. Bursting into tears, he exclaimed: “Never mind! God knows me, anyhow; and I wish some of you did!”
There were other eyes full of tears just then, and, in spite of his little shorn head, Frank was suddenly recognized by all. He was hugged to his mother’s heart more tenderly than ever before, and a deeper love than Frank, with his beautiful curls, had ever known, sprang up in the heart of each for the sobbing child.
“God knows me, anyhow!” Frank remembered what many of us forget—that, whatever betide, God never fails to recognize His own. It is a comfort, indeed, sometimes to think of this.
There are those who know us only when fortune smiles, —who greet our uplifted face with cold, unanswering looks when the dark days come; But God’s hand is ever outstretched to bless us. He is glad to know us—that He is ever a loving Father to every one of His children, and He never pretends that we are not His own.
The Lord Jesus knows us, too, if we are His. He says, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me: and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand.” John 10:27, 2827My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: 28And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. (John 10:27‑28).
ML 08/02/1931