“It is a little daughter, Master. Will you accept her?”
The nurse knelt before the Chinese father and laid a small bundle at his feet.
“A girl?” the father asked, turning away with disappointment. “Just a worthless girl—just another nuisance! Another mouth to fill with rice!”
Nuisance was not thrown into the river as many Chinese baby girls are, but her life was a very hard one. She learned what it meant to work, and work hard, at an age when little girls in this country think of nothing but to play. Punishments and scoldings were frequent. Then one day while she was still a small girl, her father decided to sell her for a slave!
How frightened little Nuisance was the day her father took her away to the slave market! It was hard not to cry as rough men came up to handle and feel of her to see if she were strong and well to make a good slave. With downcast eyes she did not even see the quiet man who finally bought her and led her away. Though her life had never been a happy one, still she was leaving all that she had ever known, and just what terror the future might have in store for her, she did not know, but feared.
Imagine her surprise when she heard her new master speaking kindly and lovingly to her! She was brought to a lovely home where she was told she was not to live as a servant, but as the daughter of the man who had bought her to set her free!
As little Nuisance found herself loved and cared for, it seemed to her that no greater love could ever be shown to her. But one day the man who had bought her told her of the great love of the Saviour who had seen her, not only as a little slave girl, but had seen her in the bondage of sin, and in His wondrous love had died that He might deliver her from the power of Satan.
“Truly, truly, I have been bought by love!” the little Chinese girl wept with joy.
After some years she became a faithful missionary to her own people. How she loved to tell especially the other poor neglected girls of the great LOVE of the Saviour for them, for had He not delivered her—one who had been but a nuisance, and in the bondage of both slavery and sin!
ML-03/20/1977