WILLIE was between five and six years old. His mother had two little boys, and Willie was the elder. She loved them both very much, but as Willie could talk to her, and tell her his little thoughts, and they spent much time together, he was quite a companion to her. One day she had some business to attend to which made it necessary that she should leave home for an hour or so in the afternoon; and having no one to take charge of Willie, and not being able to take him with her, she was obliged to leave him at home alone for the time she was absent. Before she went, however, she charged him to keep out of mischief, and gave him his books and playthings to occupy him till her return, telling him, as an encouragement, that she would bring home something nice for supper.
Willie felt it rather strange to be left by himself, but he tried to amuse himself, and succeeded for a while, when he became weary. He then wondered what he should do to fill up the time till his mother’s return. At length he said to himself, “O! I will set the table for supper; and mother wilt be so surprised to see it.” “ He therefore went to the Cupboard, and took the dishes out and placed them upon the table.
He was then delighted with what he had done, and thought to himself how pleased his mother would look when she came home.
Well, you may suppose, mother was not gone a minute longer than she could help, and presently he heard her at the door. He did not go to meet her, as he usually would have done, but waited till she came into the room. And, as he expected, she did look surprised. Indeed, she was almost alarmed, for she knew that, in order to get to the cupboard, he had to climb a chair, and she feared lest he had fallen and hurt himself, or had broken some of the dishes.
However, finding that no mishap had occurred, and seeing that he looked so pleased with what he had done, she only said to him that it would have been better if he had not done as he had; but she did not scold him, as she did not wish to spoil his happiness.
I could almost wish that my tale were now finished, but, as it is the truth that I am telling, I will go on to the end. After Willie’s mother had taken off her hat, and had started to get supper, she became aware of something which she had not observed before; so, calling her son to her, she said to him, “Willie, it was all very well for you to try to please me by setting the table, but why did you eat the sugar?”
You should have seen Willie’s countenance. Mother’s question had quite confronted him, and he could not give her an answer. He wondered whatever could have made her ask such a question. He felt sure that she had not seen him take the sugar, and he could not think how she knew anything about it. He had an idea that his mother knew a great deal, but he could not understand how she had found this out.
To do Willie justice, I believe that when he first thought of setting the table, he did not mean to take any of the sugar; but as he went several times to the cupboard, and saw the nice looking sugar, I am sorry to say that he was tempted to take and eat some of it. Being so young, it was not surprising that while eating it he let some of it fall on his clothes, and, of course, there was to the observant eye of his mother the evidence of her son’s offense. She wisely withheld_ this fact from him, but talked to him like a good mother, as she was, of the naughtiness of his ways, and taught him a lesson which he did not soon forget.
We have seen that Willie could not imagine how his mother had discovered what he had done; but, even supposing that she had never found it out, there was ONE, the all-seeing God, who saw him when he took the sugar, and knew, too, the stain which his wrong act made upon his childish conscience. We cannot hide anything from God, and we cannot hide ourselves from Him. Have you not seen a little child, when playing at hide-and-seek, go into a corner of the room, turning his face to the wall, so that he could not see you, vainly imagine that you could not see him? This is something like all our efforts to hide ourselves from God. But how blessed it is to have God Himself for our hiding-place! It is written of those who truly believe in Jesus, “Our life is hid with Christ in God.” And “Thou art my hiding-place.”
Messages of God’s Love 12/26/2015