LITTLE JIMMIE liked to take his teddy bear to bed with him each night. One day he noticed the bear’s insides were falling out. Mother would have to sew up the bear.
“Mommy,” he said. “My teddy bear is sick. If you sew him up he will be all better.”
Mother did sew up the bear, and then he was “all better.” Jimmie went away very pleased.
A teddy bear can soon be fixed, but not so sinful boys and girls. There is nothing we or Mother or anyone else can do to make ourselves better in God’s sight. Mother might sew up Jimmie’s teddy but after a while he would likely come apart somewhere else. And so it is with us. We all have such black hearts, full of bad thoughts which if allowed to stay come out in all kinds of sin. If we try to make ourselves better we find we get only worse instead. God says all our righteousnesses are as “filthy rags.”
There is only one thing that can take away sins and make us pure and white in God’s sight, and that is the blood of Jesus.
ML-08/11/1974