Seven-year-old Janet lived in an apartment house which was rather cheerless, for there were no flowers or bushes to brighten up the small yard where she played.
One day when she and her friend Elaine were coming home from school, they observed some beautiful roses growing on a trellis on the side of a house. Janet and Elaine eyed them enviously.
“I don’t think the people who live there would mind if we took only one rose,” said Elaine. “They are so beautiful.”
Janet was a Christian girl, but the temptation was too great, and cautiously she and Elaine tiptoed up to the trellis and each girl picked off a rose. Then they hurried away, hoping the owners would not see them.
Janet felt very guilty the rest of the way home, and although she enjoyed the rose and loved the smell of it, she knew she had sinned, and she knew that God had seen her steal. Just before she reached home, she slipped the rose into her coat pocket, hoping her mother would not find it.
Yes, God had seen the girls steal. We read in His Word, “Thou God seest me.” A few days later when her mother was brushing off Janet’s coat, she noticed the wilting rose in her pocket.
“Where did this come from?” she asked. “We don’t have any red roses like that around here.”
Poor Janet broke into tears and finay told her mother that she had stolen it. Her mother had to punish her for it, but I am quite sure that Janet learned her lesson after that. She got down on her knees and confessed her sinfulness to the Lord.
Although we are all sinners, the precious message of the gospel is that God Himself, the holy and the Just, has in mercy provided a way whereby any repentant sinner who comes to Him may have his or her sins washed away. And that is through the atoning death of the Lord Jesus on the cross. The precious blood of Christ, His beloved Son, cleanseth from all sin. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Is. 1:18.
“I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins.” Is. 44:22.
ML 08/23/1959