A group of young schoolgirls went out to the woods for a Saturday holiday. Their picnic over, they began to roam along the side of a stream that flowed from a torrent coming down the hillside, and seem to have enjoyed the afternoon, gathering wild flowers in the woods and picking berries from the bushes.
Before beginning their return journey homeward, they passed a rustic bridge on the edge of the wood, and looking over its side, one of the company observed what appeared to be a letter floating on the stream that flowed under the bridge. Curiosity led one of the girls to lower herself to the water-edge, and stretching out her hand toward what she thought was a letter, floating on the surface of the stream, seized it, and remounting the rustic steps, got on to the bridge waving the paper in her hand.
“Somebody’s love letter, I believe,” she called out to the rest of her companions, and immediately they gathered around as girls would do, eager to hear what the supposed love-letter contained of news, likely to be of interest to such a company. But you may imagine their surprise when the girl who held the letter in her hand called out,
“It is not a love-letter at all. It’s only a tract.” And she read out from the paper picked out of the stream the words,
“Not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son, to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:1616And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. (1 John 4:16). And under the words quoted, there was another text of Scripture from the same Epistle, which reads,
“So it’s a Love-letter after all,” said one of the girls, “and the best Love-letter any of us will ever get,” for she was a Christian girl, a true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and knew what it was to “love Him,” because He “first loved” her, and gave Himself to die for her sins, to bring her to. God (1 Peter 3:1818For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:18)). And in that love she was happy, because she was saved, and on the way to glory.
There was a general conversation among the group of girls about the Love-letter and its message, and as was afterward learned, similar messages had been found elsewhere in that region placed there it is believed, by one who made it her service to “sow beside all waters” the pure Gospel of God concerning His Son, that people passing, and tourists traveling in that romantic region, might read the Word of God, and learn that
And after all, as the Christian schoolgirl said, this is the best love-letter any of us will ever get, because it tells that God loved us—so that the individual soul that reads it might say,
And I verily believe that some of that group of girls in the wood came to know this, and to receive the love of the Gospel into their souls, from that day that the Love-letter on the stream carried the good news to them in simplicity.
How good it would be if our Christian friends would place tracts where others could get them to read of the Lord, and His work on the cross, and lead them to accept Him as their Saviour and Lord.
Your reward would be great when with our blessed Lord in the glory.
Your reward would be great when with our blessed Lord in the glory.
ML 06/14/1942