JOE liked to look through the Coast Guard’s large telescope at the far-off shore. How wonderful he thought it was to see boys and girls playing on the beach, ships sailing on the sea, and houses on the shore, all quite close, as if he could reach out his little hand and touch them. Then as soon as the large telescope was taken away, the entrancing scene was gone, and nothing could be seen with the naked eye but the faintest outline of the distant shore.
Joe asked the good-natured coast guard all sorts of questions about his wonderful glass that brought far away things so near. When he got home he would give his mother no rest until she promised to get him a small spyglass for himself, to bring “the far-away things near.” On Sunday evening, Joe sat on his mother’s knee listening to his bedtime Bible story. He sang his favorite hymn:
There are beautiful mansions above
All shining so bright and so fair;
As they bask in the sunshine of love,
No sadness or sorrow is there.
There are beautiful children above
In their garments as white as the snow;
They were cleansed in the blood of the Lamb
While they lived in the world here below.
“I wish I could see those beautiful mansions, Mother,” said the little fellow eagerly.
“Well, Joe, we shall have a look at them through God’s telescope,” said Mother, reaching out her hand and taking down her well-worn Bible. “This is just like the coast guard’s glass, it brings the far-off things near. We cannot see them with our ordinary eyes, but by faith we can see them quite clear and can lay hold of them too, just as we read what God says about them and believe it.”
Joe was very eager that night to get a glance at the distant shore, the heavenly mansions, and the white-robed children, and as his mother read to him about them from God’s word, his bright eyes sparkled with delight.
Joe has grown up to be a schoolboy, and he delights now to read the Book of God, which he calls his “Spyglass,” to bring the far-off heavenly things near. And Joe knows that distant shore, those heavenly mansions, to be his future home, for he is saved, and knows his title to heaven to be “the blood of the Lamb.”
Does my dear young reader know this?
ML-06/28/1964