DEAR Charlie lay sick, day after day, in a very poor little room, having but few comforts and scarcely anything to make it pretty. It was up several flights of stairs, in a tenement house, and the noise made by so many persons was often very trying to the suffering child I never saw Charlie during all those weeks of constant pain and weakness without his having a ready smile and a happy word to greet me. Can my little readers tell me what it was that made Charlie so happy, in the midst of everything to render him unhappy?
I know some of you can; those of you who have found out for yourselves that there is One whose presence can make the darkest place bright, and give comfort and joy in the midst of pain and sorrow. But to those who wonder what could make such an afflicted little boy contented and often joyful, I will just whisper, “It was because Jesus was there, and Charlie knew and loved Him.”
If you had sat beside dear Charlie’s little bed, he would have told you how he, a sinful boy, had come to the precious Saviour, and how Jesus had taken him, vile and wicked as he was, and had washed him in His precious blood, and made him so clean that he was fit to stand in the presence of God in glory.
Now, do my readers wonder that Charlie could be so bright and happy in the midst of pain and discomfort? There is no real joy apart from Jesus.
Dear Charlie knew that he was to be with Jesus in glory, but then he wanted something else—it was that Jesus might be with him here. So he wished everything around him to be just as Jesus would like to see it. Before Charlie was taken sick, he had pinned up a colored picture on his wall, of a foolish subject; but now that Jesus had come so close to him, and the Holy Spirit had taught him to desire to please Jesus, he looked at the foolish picture, and turned to his sister, and said, “Alice, take that away, and burn it up. Jesus doesn’t like to come in with that there; and I want Jesus to be here all the time.”
Ah, my little Christian reader, do you want Jesus “all the time”? Is anything too dear or too precious to be done away with, if it does not please Him?
It is when we think of what He has done for us, and of His wondrous love to us, that we delight to do those things that please Him.
ML 02/06/1916