One morning, a dear little girl came to her mother with a beaming, happy face, having in her hand a tiny wicker basket, which had been presented to her full of chocolates. These had long since disappeared, as all our young friends will understand, but now, on opening it to show to her mother, it was seen to be filled to the brim with the pretty, young, silvery buds of the palm-tree, which she had gathered, and stripped of the hard brown covering which had protected them during the cold of winter.
Her satisfaction was evidently great in seeing her valued little basket filled with the velvety things she so much liked. Her mother said,
“How pretty! But is it not a pity to gather them so young? They would grow so much larger.”
“O no, mother, I like them while they are young,” she answered.
“Yes, dear child,” was the mother’s rly, “that is why the Lord Jesus Christ invites the little children to come unto Him. He likes them to come while they are young, and says,
‘Suffer the little children to come unto Me,’ And if you are past being little children as to age, the same blessed Person says,
The mother of the little girl of whom I told you, when she was a child, one day had this verse,
“Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shall say, I have no pleasure in them,” quoted to her as she was passing through a room in which a dear servant of Christ, who was visiting her parents, was; but she did not want to listen, and went out at the door just as the solemn words, “I have no pleasure in them,” were uttered.
Her conscience was, however, reached, and as she passed into the garden, she looked up into the blue sky, and the Holy Spirit of God pressed home to her heart the solemn and awful thought that a day might come when she would have no pleasure in the Lord and His things! This made her very unhappy, and was the beginning of the work of God in her soul as to sin. She was deeply convinced of her unfitness for God, and after a short time of suffering under a crushing sense of her condition by nature, the Spirit of God, by that beautiful scripture,
“If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God ‘hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved’’ (Rom. 10:99That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. (Romans 10:9)), wrought complete deliverance from her burden, and one night she arose from her knees a happy, saved, and satisfied child.
Dear child, “Remember now!” Do not put it off.
ML 04/19/1936