The children ran out of the house to get in the car to go to school.
“Look—someone’s in our yard!” Tim shouted. “They’re stealing our apples!”
Sure enough, there were two people, a man and his wife, with a bag of apples. As soon as they saw that they had been discovered, they quickly ran out of the yard and started down the street.
We felt sad that they were stealing. If they had only asked us for the apples, we would have been happy to give them several boxes full. The man and his wife left quickly when we saw them, because they had a bad cons fence. They knew what they had done was wrong, and they did not want to meet us.
This experience reminds us of another man and his wife and another garden that we can read about in Genesis chapter 3. It is the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. God told them not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But Eve, after being tempted by Satan, took the fruit and gave some to Adam. When God came down to see them they hid, because they now had a conscience that told them what they had done was wrong. They had sinned.
When we have done something wrong to someone, we don’t like to go near them until we are sure they have forgiven us. Each one of us has sinned against God, and we don’t feel happy when we think of meeting Him, until after we have asked to be forgiven.
Perhaps those people who were stealing apples will never know that we forgave them. But each one of us can know for sure that our sins are forgiven, through the blood of Jesus Christ.
ML-12/27/1981