Rows and rows of stones round a circle in the sand, some large and some small, but all neatly arranged, with two larger ones standing in the middle; five children busily hunting for little white pebbles, and putting them among the others. This is what I saw one afternoon on the beach at a seaside town. Do you wonder what all this meant? I did. So I asked Harry, one of the little boys, who was busy with the tiny white stones.
“O! this is a model of our Children’s Service on the sands. This stone is Mr.—, and that Mr.—, the gentlemen who speak to us, and the white stones are the hymn papers they give out.”
“What is this black stone by them?” I asked.
“That’s the black bag they carry the hymns in, and the picture books they often give us after the service.”
“Do you think it wrong to play bat this?” said Elsie, a little girl of nine years old, who was helping them.
“I wanted to play at the gentlemen speaking to us,” interrupted Harry, “but Elsie would not let us.”
“Why not?” I said to Elsie quietly.
“O!” she said, “you know they always tell us about Jesus when they talk to us, and I could not bear the boys to do that in play.”
“Will you tell me why, Elsie?”
Very softly was the answer spoken,
“Because I love Him, and He is my Friend.”
Dear children, I wonder whether it grieves you when you hear others—grown up people sometimes, I am afraid—speaking lightly of that loving Saviour, and whether it is for the same reason as Elsie —because you love Him! If we love any one very much, we cannot bear to hear anything unkind said of them.
I shall never forget, while waiting at a country station, hearing two men talking about a farmer, for whom they worked. They said he was very irritable, and sometimes they could not please him. At last a man sitting by, got up and said, “That farmer is my friend, and, if you knew him as I do, you would not say such things. He is not strong, because when a boy he worked so hard to support his widowed mother, and often when you think him cross, he is suffering very much, and scarcely knows how to move about, but is so anxious to be able to provide for his mother and sister.” That man cared for his friend, did he not? The Bible says: “Unto you therefore which believe He (Jesus) is precious.” 1 Peter 2:77Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, (1 Peter 2:7).
Elsie loved the Lord Jesus, her Saviour, as her friend, and would not hear Him lightly spoken of, and told her little friends so.
We often find it is an effort to show that we belong to the Lord Jesus before our friends and schoolfellows— “to confess Him”—but He says,
“Whosoever” (and that must mean even little children) “shall confess Me bore men, him will I confess also before My Father, which is in heaven.” Matthew 10:3232Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 10:32).
Think of the happiness of that! If we confess Jesus because we really love Him, He will one day confess us, poor weak ones, before His Father and the holy angels.
ML 06/28/1931