The Happy Schoolboy Going Home

 •  3 min. read  •  grade level: 7
 
ONE bright summer day we met a little boy of our acquaintance hurrying home from school; his face lighted up with joy and expectation as he danced along the street. He held a small memorandum book in his hand, at which he glanced ever and anon as he hastened on his way towards his home, not far distant. On his reaching us we said to him—
“You seem very happy to-day.”
“Yes," he said, laughingly. "Why, I'm going home!”
“And what is that book in your hand, in which you seem so interested?" we inquired, half suspecting what it was.
"This?" he said, with a laugh, and tossing up the book in the air; "why it's my bank-book!”
“What!" we said, "have you a bankbook?”
“Yes, of course," he answered, laughing again. "I pay in my halfpennies, because father says, ' Take care of the copper, the silver will take care of itself.'”
“Well, that's right, and I hope you have a good balance at your bankers; I suppose you have, and it is that which makes you so happy this morning.”
No, I have not," he said. "I bought some pigeons the other day, and they have flown away, and I have very little left.”
“Your loss does not seem to trouble you much, just now.”
“Oh, no," he said; "why should it? I'm going home, and am with my father, you know.”
As he said this off he danced, singing as he tripped along; and as we looked at the bright and gleesome boy we thought what a picture is this of what it is the privilege of a true Christian to be. Going home, that was the element of the boy's happiness. And is not this true also of the Christian; is he not always moving from his school here towards his true home, the Father's house above? And though here he may suffer much in common with others, from outward riches making themselves wings and flying away like the little boy's pigeons, yet he has a treasure in heaven.
These divine certainties and satisfying realities, in the midst of all the uncertainties and unrealities of this passing life, cheer our hearts and put a new song into the mouth; they strengthen us, and quicken our footsteps by the way. And are they not revealed to us for this very purpose? As we live too much in the present and too little in the glorious future, we are often faint and cast down; we have not the child's faith, which finds its chief joy, not in the school or playground, however beautifully situated or exciting its games, but in the fact, always true in the Christian's lips, "I am going home." And should not the fact— not only that we are going home, but that we have also even now such a Father as we have, and that He is ever loving us—make us bright and cheerful through life's pilgrimage?
God in Christ is now our Father, and we have the evidence of the glorious fact in the Spirit of adoption dwelling in our hearts, enabling us to cry, "Abba, Father.”
Believing all these things, how comely and right it is for the Christian to have, in a more exalted sense, the spirit of the schoolboy going home, and whatever his sorrows, trials, and losses here, still to say joyfully in faith, “I am going home; I am with my Father, and whatever I may be, wherever I may be, He is equal to all my needs, and can make me holy and happy in Himself, my present and everlasting portion, and by His grace make me so to abound in those fruits of righteousness and peace, which, while they glorify Him, fill me even now with something of His own satisfaction, blessedness, and joy.”
W. P. B.