(Continued from last week)
Every step the sick man took from the car and up to his elegantly furnished room where his couch stood waiting for him, a voice seemed to ring in his ears, “Oh, Daddy, just say ‘Jesus.’ " His wife played the piano and sang for him, but the music would not drown it. The beautiful pictures that adorned the wall of his costly mansion could not shut out those three little words that continually whispered, “Just say, ‘Jesus!’"
Oh that he could just say, “Jesus!”
The word was so strange to him the man of wealth and fashion. Almost any other name would have come more easily to him who had drunk deeply of this world’s pleasures. He to say, “Jesus?” — it seemed impossible!
All through the long night as he tossed on his couch, he wished he had not stopped before that little red cottage. He could see it so clearly, and the pale gentle little face always at that one window! He could see his own beloved daughter flying down the gravel walk and he could hear her childish voice saying to him, “Just say ‘Jesus.’"
* * * * *
Time went by. Little Daniel could no longer sit up and look out the window, but was confined to his little bed. He grew weaker every day, and it made his poor widowed mother weep to think she must lose him — he had been so dear to her.
One morning he told her, “Mother, last night, I don’t know if I was asleep or not, but suddenly the room seemed to fill with a beautiful light, and there stood an angel. I thought I asked him what he wanted and he said, ‘Jesus sent me to bring you Home.’ Then the light went away and when I opened my eyes the room was dark and still.”
“It was a sweet dream,” said the good mother.
* * * * *
“Mother! Danny!” cried Charlie one morning; “there’s that car stopped out front again, and that little girl is coming in with a man.” Soon slow feeble footsteps together with the patter of little feet were heard outside the door. It was Lily and her father. She glanced about, looking for the little invalid.
“Oh Daddy, there he is,” she exclaimed. “He’s lying down. This is my father,” she went on addressing Mrs. Marks, “and he’s come to see your sick boy.”
The mother offered the gentleman a chair and as he seated himself he said kindly, “My dear lady, my little Lily here wouldn’t let me rest until I promised to come out and see you — and here I am.” In the meantime Lily had taken off her hat and finding a stool sat down beside the little sufferer, her glowing complexion a vivid contrast to Danny’s pale little cheeks..
Mr. Irving asked if Danny had ever been well. “Never, sir,” replied the mother; “he has been an invalid from his birth.”
“My little girl seems much impressed with the fact that he is very cheerful and happy.”
“He is both, sir, though he suffers much pain. Only yesterday he said, Mother, I do wish the Lord Jesus would take me now.”
The stranger’s eyes grew moist as he listened, and said, “He is indeed Little Daniel comforted with such a hope, but my days and nights are so dark and cheerless.”
“Perhaps, sir,” said Mrs. Marks in her quiet way, “you have not learned that it is good to suffer, and that the Lord sometimes leads us to Himself by thorny ways.”
“But is He good in allowing that poor little fellow to suffer pain all his life, a child who never rebelled against Him?”
“Talk with him yourself, and judge, sir,” she replied. “He is my teacher and comforter in a great many things, and I will be so sorry to lose him,” she said turning away.
ML-06/13/1971