Grandma was napping when Puss discovered the beautiful soft ball of yarn lying on the table! No one was around to say, “Scat!” as he rolled it onto the floor and bounded after it.
What fun! Puss had the best time he had had for a long time, rolling, tumbling, kicking at the snarls; until he himself began to look like a ball of yarn, for most of it was wound and tangled about him. When he finally decided to stop he found himself a prisoner! So Grandmother found him some time later, fast asleep in the snarls and tangle.
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One day a boy sat on a chair in front of the Sunday school. His teacher stood beside him, and as he spoke he wound strands of thin white thread about him, tying him to the chair.
“This spool of thread is like sin,” he explained. When Johnny does or says anything he should not, Satan binds him with that sin. Perhaps, when Johnny was a small boy there were not so many threads of sin holding him, just as we have only put a few threads about him now. “See if you can break them, John!”
Johnny gave an easy jerk, and the threads were snapped.
But the teacher again began to wind the thread about him, quite a bit more than the first time. “Now, can you get free?”
This time it was harder, but soon with a grin Johnny freed himself.
As the teacher again began to wind the thread he said, “You see, at first, if he had tried to, Johnny could have broken some of the bad habits that may have taken hold of him, just as he quite easily broke the thread. But now as he grows older Johnny finds more and more sins and evil habits binding him. God's Word speaks of it as being caught in the snare of the wicked one, Satan. See, I have wound the whole spool about him. What can you do, Johnny?”
Johnny struggled hard with his face growing red. Finally he had to shake his head and give up.
As the teacher cut the threads with a pair of scissors he finished his little talk. “Each thread is not strong, but oh, the strength of sin to hold us when we grow older! God asks us to 'Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth!'” (Ecclesiastes 12:11Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; (Ecclesiastes 12:1)).
Have you been set free, boys and girls? Or are you still enjoying your own willfulness as the playful kitten, not realizing how sin is binding you? Receive the Lord Jesus as your Savior!