Mother,” said Elizabeth one day, “I wish I were you; you do not have to obey any one.”
“You are mistaken, my darling. There is One whom
I seek to obey and fear to grieve.”
“O, I understand. You mean God, mother. But does He require of you very difficult things?”
“Sometimes.”
“What, mother I would like to know?”
“To deny myself, for instance; to fulfill my duty toward you without weakness or murmuring; to be to you and your brothers a kind, patient mother, and to bring you up for Him.”
“I do not see how you can bring us up for Him?”
“It means that I am responsible to show you the way of salvation and to teach you to love and serve the Lord.”
“If you did not do it, mother, would God punish you?”
“Yes, in this way. Not having brought you up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, I would soon have the sorrow of seeing you grow up in indifference to God, and in sin, Sometimes, also, God chastises weak or negligent parents in a more marked and terrible way. I have told you the story of Eli, and in what way his sons perished, and he with them, because he had failed to correct and chastise them.”
“Then, mother, when you punish us are you obeying God?”
“Yes, darling, and that is certainly my most painful duty toward you.”
Elizabeth sat for a while in silence, then leaning over, she threw her arms around her mother’s neck saying:
“I was pretty sure you did not punish me because you are angry with me, for the other day, when I was so naughty and you sent me to my room, I saw your eyes were full of tears. That shamed me so, I resolved I would try not to pain you any more, I knelt clown when you had all gone for your walk and asked God to make me obedient.”
How good it is, clear reader, to do as this, little girl did, and that is, in the consciousness of utter weakness in yourself to do what is right, go to the Lord and be cast upon Him for all your ways and He alone can keep you, and enable you to do what is right. But first you must receive Him as your own personal Saviour.
ML 05/31/1936