KATIE N. was surrounded with everything this world could give to make her happy, and she had plenty of health and spirits to enjoy what was given her. But she was a lonely child, and the very, exuberance of life and fun made her more intensely sad and solitary in herself. She heard a great deal about God, but that was a subject she never cared about. She delighted in reading: but if there was anything in it about God, or a quotation out of the Bible, she always slipped over it.
Perhaps you think Katie was a very naughty child, though perhaps not more naughty than other children are, but she did not know God. She saw no beauty in Jesus that she should desire Him: her heart was at enmity with God.
She was very quick and also diligent at her lessons, and yet she was seldom able to repeat her Scripture verse correctly. This was a source of sorrow to Katie, for she felt it very humiliating to have it returned to her.
One day her governess gave her to learn some verses in the Gospel of John: but the words of grace and truth would not abide in her unreceptive mind. Three times over her teacher returned the book so that she might learn it more perfectly. The third time Katie took the Testament, read the verses over, and feeling that she could not make her memory hold the words, she dashed the book across the room in a burst of passion and despair. Her teacher, who loved the Lord, was greatly pained by such conduct, picked up, the Testament, and said to Katie,
“I shall give you no more Scripture to learn.”
Poor Katie! she was to be treated as a rejector of God. She tried to be glad, but her pride did not like it, for we all like to be thought good of, whether we are so or not. Something whispered to her that it was a great relief to have no verses to learn; but deep down in Katie’s heart, there was a great pain.
One, two, three, four days passed. At last Sunday came. Was Katie to learn no verses, even on Sunday? She shut herself alone in her room to think. Then she took up the Testament, while her little hands trembled with agitation, and she felt cold all over. She thought she would really try, and she did try, but the verses would not stay with her. At last she burst into tears, and threw herself on her knees, and said,
“O, God, do make me able to learn these verses.”
She knelt there a long time, as if waiting for God to say He would. At last she got up, and tried again. Calmly and quietly, she read the verses over out loud, and for the first time, it struck her that they were beautiful and a thought sank down into her heart that pained her very much, —it was this:
How dreadfully bad my heart must be, not to like the very words that Jesus spoke when He was down here, and from that moment Katie began to wish to be converted.
She went down stairs, and going very softly up to her teacher, she put the Testament into her hand. She took it silently, and Katie slowly and solemnly repeated every word correctly, while her teacher’s heart rose up in thankfulness to God, who had not permitted the enemy to triumph, and that Katie had not taken another Scripture, but had really overcome where she had failed. At that time Katie was about ten years old.
One day she heard some grown-up people say that a very good man was coming to preach, and that he had been remarkably blessed to little children. Katie listened eagerly to these accounts, and though she would not allow anyone to know her feelings, she secretly hoped that she might hear him, and be converted too; for she felt more and more unhappy and lonely, and it seemed to her that the only truly happy people were those who loved God.
One evening it was proposed that Katie should go with her nurse to hear this good man. Her heart bounded, and she thought,
“Perhaps I shall come home quite changed.”
She went, —the place was full of children—some attentive, others careless. The moment the preacher began, Katie fixed her eves upon him, and listened with such earnestness that when she went home, she was able to write it all down. But, alas! she did not feel converted. This was a great disappointment.
Why do You think Katie’s desire was not granted? Was it not a right desire? Was God unmindful of her desire? Was Jesus slow to reveal Himself to a heart that wanted Him? O, no, He delights to respond to the very weakest movement of a heart toward Him, and let me assure you of what is more blessed still, —no heart ever yearned for Christ until Christ’s heart had first yearned for it. We love Him because He first loved us, and if you have the smallest longing towards the Lord, you may be sure He has put that longing there in answer to His own desire for you.
Do you know why Katie could not see Him as her Saviour? Because she was looking into her own poor little miserable heart to see some wonderful change in there.
She read all the stories of conversions in the New Testament and in all, there seemed to come some wonderful change, so Katie thought; and she fancied that, like Paul, scales might fall from her eyes, or that she would see a vision, or hear words said to her and all this mistake was because Katie did not know that she was lost, that her heart was so bad that God would not trust it one bit, but that, apart from her altogether, before ever she was born. God had settled the whole question of sin in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. She had nothing to do with it; God had done it all.
This is what Katie did not know, and now she became very careless, and tried for a long time to forget all about it. She threw her whole heart into all that she thought was pleasant, and she thought she would soon be gay and thoughtless like other girls. But there is a Person in heaven who is sitting at God’s right hand, and that Person had His eyes on Katie all the while. He knew every thought in her heart, whether by day or night, and He loved her. He thought of her as one for whom He had died on the cross. He was the Good Shepherd who gave His life for the sheep, who loves His little lambs. and who goes after them until He finds one missing lamb. What does He do? He carries it home on His shoulder, rejoicing, and saying,
“I have found My sheep which was lost.”
Reader, you were also a missing lamb from the fold of Christ. Are you now being carried in those arms that were once stretched out upon the cross for you? O, the pain to that Holy One, to hang upon the shameful cross, and all for sinners such as you and me, for in Him is no sin. Thus the Good Shepherd: watched over Katie.
It was soon after this that she lost one whom she greatly loved. She had been lonely before, but now she felt as if the earth was too desolate to be endured, and she said to herself,
“I must have God, or I shall die.”
Katie had plenty of kind friends, many who loved her, but none could give her happiness, and she felt Jesus could. Katie was beginning to feel what it is to be lost—a lost soul! God seemed far away, and all was darkness about. Many nights she lay awake for a long time, thinking sad and dreadful thoughts—that God heard everybody but her, and that perhaps He never would hear her, and a great deal more that Satan was glad to make her think.
One night the Holy Spirit whispered to Katie’s heart the question. Did not Jesus say.
“Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out?” Then such a number of verses came into Katie’s mind, so that she was quite surprised. She began to think over the whole life of Jesus; she recalled the lovely story of His birth, and of the shepherds rejoicing in company with the heavenly host that a Saviour was born; the thought of His lowly life. and of His terrible death: and as it came to her mind that that perfect One had suffered in the sinner’s place, the words. “It is finished”, seemed illuminated before her eyes.
“It is finished” she repeated, “What is finished? All is finished. and finished for me, for me!”
She jumped out of bed, and though the room was quite dark, it seemed lighted up to Katie, as she knelt there and spoke for the first time consciously to the One who had finished all the work of redemption for her, —who had given her eternal life that she might never perish.
Truly, so it had come to pass, —Jesus had bound up in the bundle of life with Himself this poor desolate child, whom nothing in this world could satisfy: whom no one could make happy. But Himself.
The Word of God was her companion, her comfort, her resource: so that she used often to say she could never be lonely again.
“The Shepherd’s bosom bears each lamb
O’er rock, and waste and wild.
The object of that love I am,
And carried like a child.”
ML 08/16/1925