TALKING, one Lord’s Day afternoon, as we so often do in my class, about going to heaven, little Willie asked, “Where’s the stairs?” Before I could answer the question, Louie, an intelligent little girl of six, said, in the most simple manner possible, as if there was not the least difficulty about the matter, “Oh, Jesus will take us up in His arms.” “How sweetly true,” I thought.
Then I added, “And Jesus is the stairs to heaven. Louie was right, for it is Jesus who takes us up to heaven, and brings us to His Father.” Then Louie repeated the lovely verse— “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me”; and I told the children that Jesus calls Himself “The Way” because He came down to this earth from heaven, and is Himself the way to His Father.
Then I spoke of the young man who had to flee from his father’s house because his brother meant to kill him; how that when night came on he was yet many, many miles from the safe place to which he was flying, and had to lay himself down to sleep on the cold earth, with stones for his pillow; how he fell asleep, and dreamed the most beautiful of dreams—a dream which was no mere dream, but a vision of God: for he saw in his dream “a ladder (or steps, or a stair) set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.” The Lord stood above it, and told the poor, homeless runaway that He would be with him wherever he went, and would by-and-by give him the land he was lying upon.
But we have not to climb stairs or a ladder to reach heaven, for Jesus Himself is the Way, and, as little Louie said, He will take us up in His arms.
Little Willie remembered what Louie said, for one morning, a good while after, in the day school, when the children were all standing with their hands folded reverently for prayer, just waiting for the word, “All eyes shut,” and I was telling the very little ones that we were going to speak to the good, kind God, Willie said, “He do give us all our things. He’ll take us up in His arms wi’out any stairs.” E. B. R.