Little Joe was just a poor boy whose early years were spent for the most part on the streets of one of our big cities. Where his father and mother were, if he had either, he did not know. But better times came for Joe when a kind friend got him into a boy’s home. There he had nice clothes to wear and plenty to eat. There too he went to school.
One day in one of the classes, the teacher asked Joe to spell the word “friend.” Little Joe stood up and the letters came slowly-“F-R-I-E-N-D.”
“That’s right, Joe,” said the teacher; “and now tell us what is a friend?”
Little Joe studied for a moment trying to find a way to express his thoughts. At last it came.
“Oh,” he said, “he’s a feller that knows all about ya an’ likes ya just the same.”
That was the highest thing in friendship that Joe’s brief life had taught him. Little Joe hardly realized it then, but in those few words he spelled out the sweetest truth ever made known in heaven or in earth, in time or eternity, for there is no friend to whom these words better apply than Jesus-the Friend and Saviour of sinners.
In that past eternity, before we were born, he saw us in our sin and wretchedness and ruin—and He loved us just the same.
He came to earth to make that love known, to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, so that poor sinners might share His joys in that bright home above.
The psalmist could say, He knows my downsitting and mine uprising. Psa. 139:22Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. (Psalm 139:2). Again in John 10:2727My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: (John 10:27) we read, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them...” He knows all my weaknesses and those too-often failures, yet He loves me just the same.
There’s a Friend for little children
Above the bright blue sky;
A Friend who never changes,
Whose love can never die.
ML-07/17/1977