“One Sunday evening, I was resting on the sofa in the parlor. My wife had gone out and no one was with me but my little niece, Mabel, just six years old, who was at the time visiting us. For a while she sat by the table amusing herself looking at pictures. After a bit, she got tired of them, and she came up to the sofa and began putting her arms around me in her childlike way.
" ‘Uncle Ben,’ she said, putting her little hand in mine, ‘tell me something about Jesus. Mommie always does Sunday nights.’
“I was struck by her request, and was quite embarrassed. I evaded it, and began talking of something else. But the little one would not be put off. Again and again she came back to the same request: ‘Uncle Ben, tell me something about Jesus,’ As I did not reply, she said at last, opening her wide blue eyes, ‘Why, you know about Jesus; don’t you?’
“That question awakened thoughts and feelings in me I had never had before. I am afraid I had to disappoint my little niece that evening. But that night I could not sleep; the dear child’s wondering words, ‘You know about Jesus, don’t you?’ haunted me through all the long, silent hours. I felt I did not know about Jesus and had not wished to know about Him; and a sense of my ignorance and guilt weighed heavily upon my soul.
“I was distressed for days. I read my Bible with an inquiring, anxious heart, till at length I found the blessed Saviour, and could say in humility and faith, ‘Now I know about Jesus,’ that precious Saviour about whom little Mabel so eagerly wished to hear.”
Oh, the power of the name of Jesus! Uttered by his little niece in her childlike simplicity, applied by the Spirit of God to heart and conscience, it wrought a mighty change in the life of Uncle Ben. It brought before him his utterly lost condition — without God, without hope in the world. It revealed to him a Saviour who died for sinners, but who rose again from the dead, and now lives forever in heaven. It charmed his soul, and captured his heart.
Has the name of Jesus charmed your soul, dear reader? Has He captured your heart? Or, do you still spurn that love, and travel the broad road that leads down to destruction?
There is nowhere that earth’s sorrows
Are so felt as up in heaven,
There is nowhere that earth’s failings
Have such kindly judgment given.
For the love of God is broader
Than the measure of man’s mind,
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
ML-08/29/1971