“RICH? yes, I’d like to be rich,” answered Claude to his friend’s question, “as rich as Vanderbilt who died worth ever so many millions, and who must have been the happiest man out, I think.”
Not so fast, Claude, thought I, as I listened to the boy. Riches, after all, do not make people happy, unless the blessing of the Lord takes all the sting of sorrow out of them.
I daresay among other millionaires’ names you know that of Mr. Astor, of New York. He was at one time considered the richest man in the country, worth many millions of dollars.
One day a friend in conversation alluded to his great wealth, and said to him, “Does it make you happy?”
“Happy? Ah, no,” said Mr. Astor, while a melancholy expression passed over his face, “I must leave my money behind me when I die—It won’t take away trouble—it won’t buy off sickness—it won’t buy off death. No, no, my money does not make me happy.” And it did not save him from being drowned, going down in the Titanic, with $2,000 they found in his pocket when his body was found.
A startling answer to a plain question, was it not? So thought Mr. Astor’s friend.
Three months after this, the same gentleman called to see a poor old woman.. She was lame, and she lived in one small room, up several stairs, earning her ling by knitting socks, comforters, and mittens. The gentleman put the same question to her that he had asked Astor.
“Margaret, are you happy?”
“Yes, very,” she answered, and the sudden brightening of her face made her words sound doubly true, “I am just as full of happiness as I can be—I don’t believe I could hold another drop.”
“But how can that be?” said the gentleman. “You are not very strong, sometimes sick, and earn very little— surely it would make you happier to be rich.”
“No, no,” she said, “you forget the sweet promises in God’s blessed Book have the blessing of the Lord and it maketh rich. I have Christ, and Christ is God’s—all things are mine.”
Praise the Lord for such a testimony.
Ah, yes, Margaret had learned life’s best and grandest secret. Riches, honor, glory, power, without Jesus cannot satisfy the hungry human soul, but anything with Jesus is everything.
ML-03/21/1920