WITH what delight the children look forward to see the beautiful white snow, with which God, in the winter, covers the fields, the trees and housetops. All is so quiet, and the dirty cities look so clean. Sleds, large and small, are brought out, and the hill-sides are often a lively scene with happy children having no thought of care or danger.
Here comes a sled with four happy faces, while the little fellow is pulling his single sled up the hill to get another turn. Apparently, no thought of anything happening, than simply the pleasure they are after. How like that is to all there is in this world. Nearly everything seems to have a bright side and our minds get occupied with that’ alone, and often we do not think of results. Particularly is it so with what is sin. Satan will even present something attractive in bad things, but he never tells us about the awful results of sin. God tells us about some bad things that people did, but He always tells us the results, so that we may fear Him and turn away from everything that is bad. If the man that commits murder was only to stop and think of the terrible result—that he must be hung up with a rope around his neck. do you think he would be apt to do it? Ah, I think not. Do you think the boy who would steal, would do so, if he knew lie was to be caught and sent to the work house? Surely not. So with the child that would say what he knew was not true, if he would only stop to think that every bad thing must have its bad result, he might be preserved from telling the untruth.
It is not only that sin has its bad results in this life, but after death comes the judgment from God. Do some of you say, What can we do now? for we have already done what is wrong. You can never atone for your sins. There is nothing that you could do that could wash your sins away. Job said “If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean; yet shalt Thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me.” Job. 9:30, 31. So it is evident none can make himself clean before God. But God has provided a remedy. In His wonderful love He has given His Son to bear what we deserved for all our sins, and if we now believe in Him, He cleanses us from all our sin, and tells us He has borne all the judgment, so there is no punishment left for us.
Oh, dear children, should not we who know this, seek to live now for Him, and seek to please Him in all our ways, seeing He has so loved us and has done all this for us? Surely we should, and He will enable us to do so, if we will ask Him daily to keep us. May we say, “PRESERVE ME, O GOD: FOR IN THEE DO I PUT MY TRUST.” Ps. 16:1.
ML 11/27/1904