Happy evenings in the old home, when, under my mother’s watchful eye, my sister Lydia and I sat drawing and painting texts for the sick and suffering ones in the hospital, which we visited once a week, giving little presents to the sufferers, and speaking a word of cheer to them.
My sister Lydia had a very pretty colored text, upon which she had spent great pains. The words of it were,
When Lydia handed the text to a cripple girl, who had been for many months in the hospital, she smiled, and pressing the text to her bosom, said,
“O how I love that text. It was the means of my salvation when I was a girl at school, and, although I am no longer able to run and enjoy life, as I was then, I have the gift of eternal life in my possession, and I enjoy it day and night.” Then patting Lydia’s cheek, she gently said,
“I hope the dear child who has taken such pains to paint this pretty text, has received God’s gift for herself, and knows that she is saved too.”
Lydia said nothing in reply, but that word of the sick girl troubled her, as it afterward did me. The fact is, we had been so accustomed to hear of Jesus, and, from our earliest years, to learn and respect texts about Him and His great salvation, that it was taken by most of our friends for granted that we were both children of God. But grace does not “run in the blood”; therefore, although our parents were both earnest Christians, and made it their study to bring us up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, we had to be saved just as other sinners.
Lydia was troubled after that question. At first she thought it was rude, but, as she thought over it, she saw it was quite a proper and a needful question to ask. She told me in our bedroom one night, that she was not saved, for she had not received the gift of God. Although I was Just as she was, unsaved, I said,
“Then do receive it, Lydia, and you will be saved.”
I believe it was either then or soon after, that my sister really took Christ as her personal Saviour, and when we next visited the hospital, she could tell the one who had first spoken to her, that she had now the gift of eternal life as her own. Lydia was a happy Christian, and it was chiefly through her clear testimony and Christ-like life, that I too was led to the Saviour. Now we are both happy in the knowledge of His love, that He has saved us, and that we shall dwell with Him and all our loved ones in glory.
It may be some of my young readers are as Lydia and I were in our early years—well taught in the Word, able to repeat it, make texts from it, —and yet unsaved. We had not then received the gift of God, which is the real beginning of the Christian life. Have you?
ML 09/27/1936