What a sad picture we have before us! The poor doctor looks anxiously at the dear little girl—he feels he has done all within his power to save her life. What despair is written on the father’s face, and how the dear mother is grieving. This picture makes me think of a little girl, named Louisa, who died when she was yet but a little girl. Although a tiny child, she had learned to trust the Lord Jesus, and was happy because she knew that she belonged to Him. Her dear mother also loved the Lord, but her father seemed to have no thought for anything, but the affairs of this life. Though he had no thought of God or of his own soul, he loved his dear little Louisa with the most tender affection; and bitter, indeed, was his sorrow when, after she had been ill for some time, he heard the doctor say that he could do no more for his little pet.
Little Louisa grew very weak and thin, and as her mother sat by her bedside one day, doing all she could to comfort her child, she found that though Louisa was suffering great pain, there was a grief she felt more than her bodily pain. What was her sorest trouble? Ah, it was not the thought that soon she was to leave her bed of pain and go to be at rest with Jesus, but it was the thought of leaving those she loved here. She knew her dear mother would meet her again in the presence of her precious Saviour; but her father! as Louisa thought of him, she cried out,
“O, father, if I could hear you pray before I die, I should die happy!”
The sorrow-stricken father heard that cry, and it went to his heart. Could he refuse the last request of his dying child? At last he could bear it no longer, and kneeling beside the little sufferer, the strong man bowed his head, and amid sobs and tears, prayed that God, who had saved his child, would save him, too, and would let him meet her in heaven.
Little Louisa listened to her father’s prayer, and in a few moments passed away to be with the Lord. Her poor father’s prayer was answered; he now trusted in Jesus, and could look forward with his wife to the day when they would see their child in the blessed place, “where Christ is gone.”
“MY SOUL. WAIT THOU ONLY UPON GOD:... TRUST IN HIM AT ALL TIMES.” Psa. 62: 5 and 8.
ML 02/03/1946