LITTLE JOE was 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, I do not know. But better times came for Joe when kind friends got him into a home for boys. 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,” said the teacher;
“and now, Joe, tell us what is friend?”
The little fellow studied for a moment trying to find a way to express his thought. At last it came.
“Oh,” said he, “he’s a feller tha knows all about ya, an’ likes ya jus 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 on the sweetest truth ever made known on earth or in heaven, in time or eternity, for there is no friend to whom these few words better apply that to Jesus—the Saviour of sinners.
ML-02/27/1966