AILEEN is only six years old, and not very big for her age. Her mother loves her very dearly, for she is a bright, sweet, little girl, and makes sunshine in her home. And it is no wonder that she is a good, pleasant child, for she knows the love of God to her, and she loves Him back again.
I have never met this little girl, so you will ask how it is I know so much about her. Well, a friend of mine in Ireland told me all this, and also gave me a copy of a little prayer that this dear child wrote, which is now lying on the table beside me.
Aileen never meant any one but God to see her prayer; but she somehow dropped the piece of paper on which she had written it, and her mother picked it up. It was on part of an old newspaper wrapper, and the dear mother’s eyes filled with tears as she read the large, irregular writing, and understood for the first time what was in her little daughter’s heart, making her so unselfish, gentle, and thoughtful.
This is what Aileen had written: —
“My own dear God, I love You, and forgive me for being bold, I am very sorry. God, I do love You, and I wish I was in heaven, and when I die take me up to You.”
You see, she is only a very little child, and does not know perhaps all you do about God’s way of saving sinners. She does not say a word in her prayer about Jesus having died for her. She may not have been taught much about Him, but she has anyhow heard enough of God’s love and goodness to make her love Him back again, and to long to be with Him in His bright home.
Let us consider what she says in her little prayer, and you ask yourself how far you can say what she does. Now, to begin with, could you call God your “own dear God,” as this little Irish child does? Oh! what a wonderful thing to be able thus to claim Him as your own. Like David, who says, “Oh! God, Thou art my God.” Is He not a God worth having? so strong so wise, so loving!
Then Aileen says, “I love you.” Like King David, again, who exclaims, “I love the Lord!” Do you really love God? I remember very well the time when I did not, and what a shock it gave me one day when I awoke to the fact that I should not be even happy in heaven, because I had no love for God! Ah! that is many years ago, and I am so glad now that I can say with Aileen that I do love Him who first loved me, and that I know it will be just fullness of joy to be by-and-by in His presence. But how is it with you, my child?
Then our little Aileen owns herself a sinner before God, and, believing in His love and grace, she asks His forgiveness. Have you ever done this? Have you turned to the Lord, simply and truly, and told Him that you know yourself to be a naughty child, as Aileen says, in her Irish way, “very bold”?
I daresay you are bigger and older than she is, and have done many more naughty things than she has. Have you ever, like her, been “very sorry” yet?
I know a youth who, when he was but seven years old, felt the burden of his sins so heavy, and yet he was what people would call “such a good little boy.” But Willie looked at himself in the light of God’s presence much as Aileen does, and could not bear to feel how unfit he was for His holy eye, so he crept away under a stack, and prayed to God to have mercy on him, and God did have mercy, and saved him, and made his heart glad, and today he is a rejoicing Christian, seeking to bring others to Jesus, the Saviour.
Aileen is not afraid to again repeat, “I do love you.” Surely God has, by His Holy Spirit, made her to understand that, if He hates sin, He loves the sinner; so, instead of running away to hide from God, like Adam and Eve did when they found out they were sinners, this little child flies to God with all her sins, and, as it were, hides in Him. She is not afraid then to ask Him to welcome her into His bright heaven when she leaves this world.
I wish I could tell her about Jesus coming to fetch His redeemed ones home, for that is a far more joyous hope than the thought of dying so as to get to heaven. You see if we die, though we may be ever so happy ourselves, we must leave some sad hearts behind us to grieve over the empty places; but, at the Lord’s coming, all that are His will be caught up together to meet Him in the air, and there will be no sad partings. When Jesus went away He promised He would come back again to take His people to His Father’s house. And they have been waiting for Him ever since. It is a blessed hope, for they long to see Him, “whom absent they love,” and to be with Him forever. We do not know how soon that glad day may be, but He hath said, “Surely, I come quickly.”
“It may be at morn, when the day is awaking,
When sunlight thro’ darkness and shadow is
breaking,
That Jesus will come in the fullness of glory,
To receive from the world His own.
“Oh, joy oh, delight! should we go without dying;
No sickness, no sadness, no dread, and no crying;
Caught up through the clouds with our Lord, into
glory,
When Jesus receives His own.”
When Aileen’s mother read her little girl’s prayer she was terribly afraid God was going to take her darling away from her. But I hope myself very much that if Jesus does not soon come, Aileen may grow up to be a holy, happy Christian, living to serve the only and true God, who has already won her young heart to Himself, and waiting for His Son from heaven, even “Jesus who has saved her from the wrath to come.”
D. & A. C.