"Follow the leader!" yelled Jim. He and his friends took off running across the field. Jim, Bill and Greg were good friends and were together almost all the time. From morning until evening during the summer, they played ball and lots of other things that boys 10, 11 and 12 years old can find to do. But the best thing of all about these three friends was that they all belonged to the Lord Jesus. Each boy had accepted Him as his own Savior.
However, as of yesterday their "gang" had grown from three to four. Wayne was the new boy. They had watched Wayne's family move into the red house at the end of their street. Although kind of shy at first, Wayne was glad to find some boys his own age to play with.
Across the field, over the pasture fences, a running jump over Pebble Creek, they followed Jim. It was lots of fun! Up the hill and through the woods they trailed, never stopping to catch their breath. Sometimes they jumped over fallen logs, sometimes they crawled under branches, then down narrow trails and across mounds of rocks, but they were always running.
Wayne saw for the first time that they were running near a small river. As they climbed a hill, he could hear the sound of rushing water. They came out of the woods into a clearing, and there was the top of a waterfall! The river flowed over a rock cliff and fell 30 feet to the rocks at the bottom. It was so pretty that Wayne stopped to look. As he stood observing the falls and rushing river, he suddenly realized that the rest of the boys were already on the other side. He wondered how they had gotten over there. It didn't take him long to find their "bridge." It was an old board about eight inches wide. He could see that if he wanted to get to the other side, their "bridge" was the only way to cross. He guessed that Jim and the other boys had used it lots of times, but he was not too sure he wanted to use it.
Wayne looked down at the water splashing on the rocks below. A cold shiver ran up and down his back. His new friends were waiting for him to cross over. If he refused to follow, they might think he was a sissy. Looking down at the rocks again, he almost didn't care what they thought. He wasn't sure he wanted to cross that skinny-looking board.
“Come on!" called Jim. "It's okay. The board is good and strong. Just don't look down at the waterfall and the rocks—keep your eye on the board. You can trust it...it held us.”
Wayne hesitated as he took his first step. He was scared. And then it was just a few more quick steps and he was over. "Safe!" he sighed out loud.
Just a little farther the boys stopped for a rest by the river. They pulled off their shoes and stuck their feet in the cool water. Boy, did that feel good! They talked about the bridge and how scared each of them had been the first time they went over it. Jim, who was the oldest, said that it reminded him of how Jesus had saved him. Jim wasn't afraid to talk about Jesus to kids younger than himself.
“There was a big gap between God and me," he explained, "because I was a sinner and He is holy. But Jesus, God's Son, came and stood between us, just like that board is between the two cliffs. The board is the only way to get across the river. Jesus is the only way that we can cross over to heaven. There's no way we can get there by ourselves, because our sins are in the way. We have to trust Jesus to take our sins away. He is our 'bridge.'”
Wayne seemed interested and asked a few questions. Jim went on to explain, with Bill and Greg adding a little, that "God cannot accept us with our sins. He loves us so much that He sent the Lord Jesus into this world. On Calvary's cross Jesus took all God's punishment for the sins of anyone who will believe on Him. If we believe that He died for our sins, then we are saved. I am just as sure about going to heaven as you were, Wayne, when you said 'safe!' after you got across the board.”
Wayne had never heard anything like that before. It seemed to make sense, but he just wasn't sure. He thought about what Jim had said, for a couple of weeks. He watched Jim and listened to him and the others as they played. He had never met boys like them before.
Jim invited Wayne to go to Sunday school with him. Wayne wanted to go, but his parents would not let him. Now, three weeks later, they finally said he could go.
At Sunday school he heard the story of God's love again, just as he had heard it from Jim and the other boys. Hearing the story of God's love, and understanding that he was a sinner, he accepted the Lord Jesus as his Savior, too.
He said to Jim on the way home, "I'm trusting Jesus just like I trusted that board to hold me. He's my Savior now, too.”