WITH a plain little chair for a throne, an old umbrella for a canopy, and a wreath of grape leaves for a crown, the youngest child makes a contented looking little queen.
Just outside the door you see the grape vines. The basket inside shows they were full of fruit. And now the children are feasting on the grapes they have gathered.
They have made the youngest one queen, and are serving her very attentively and kindly.
You may learn from this that you should play contentedly with your little brothers and sisters, or friends. You should be unselfish and ready to give them the first place.
But there is still another lesson this picture teaches us.
If you should go out to the grape vine and look carefully, do you think you would find any thistles on it or any poison berries? No, not at all,
Perhaps on the other side of the door, just out of sight, is a bramble bush. Let us look closely at that. Are there any grapes on it? Are they any peaches or other good fruit?
Surely not. We would never find these delicious fruits on a bramble bush or on any kind of a weed. Each tree and plant bears the kind of fruit that belongs to it by nature.
When you see a tree with peaches on it, you know that is a peach tree. When you see a plant with ugly berries on it, you know that plant is a weed.
Little reader, do you know that you are bearing fruit? Every act, word and thought are fruit of some kind, — either good or bad.
If you do not love the Lord Jesus, nothing you do is good in God’s sight. You are like a corrupt tree that can bear only bad fruit.
But if you love the Saviour, you have eternal life — a new life that can bring forth good fruit.
Everything you do for Jesus, and because you love Him, is the fruit of this new life and is good fruit. The old, bad nature is still with us, and when it acts, the fruit is bad.
Now, dear reader, if those about us See us doing and saying naughty things, will they think we are followers of Jesus? No; they will judge us by our fruit, just as we know a tree by its fruit. Remember the verse above,—“By their fruits ye shall know them.”
Then let us ask God daily to help us at all times not to yield to this sinful nature which produces only bad fruit. Let us seek to please Him in everything. Then others will know by our fruit that we are children of God.
ML 09/29/1912