“MAMIE,” said her teacher, “do you think you are getting any stronger?”
“No, Miss Smith, I’m getting weaker all the time. Mamma is afraid I’ll not grow up to be a woman.” Her teacher thought so too, as she looked into the pale little face, and felt her thin small hands in hers, and she asked, “What do YOU think Mamie?”
“I think mamma is right.”
“And are you afraid to die, dear one?”
“No, teacher, that is not so much. Mamma says I’ll go to heaven, if I’m good.”
“And are you good, dear?”
“Not very; not as good as I ought to be.”
“Mamie, HOW good do you think you will have to be for God to say, ‘Now you are quite good enough to please Me.’?”
“Oh, very good indeed, I should think: quite good altogether.”
“Did you ever know of any one quite good altogether?”
“No, Teacher, only Jesus.”
“Then you see dear, you would have to be as good as Jesus. Shall you ever be as good, do you think?”
“Oh, no, Miss Smith, I know I never can be that good.”
“Then don’t you see, dear child, you never can be good enough to please God, and so you can never get to heaven in that way. Now listen to God’s way. He does not say, ‘Be good’—He knows we can’t: but He says, ‘Look at the cross: who died there?’”
“Jesus.”
“For His own badness? No, for yours. When you think of Jesus hanging on the cross, say to yourself, ‘That’s as if I hung there, as if I was punished for all my sins.’ So now God can say, ‘I have nothing against you, I want you to know that and be happy.’”
Dear little one, are you trying to be saved in Mamie’s way, that is, by what YOU can do? If so, stop and take God’s way, that is, what JESUS has done. “Jesus did it all,” for all who trust Him, and then we can prove we love Him by doing what He bids us.
ML 11/09/1902