LITTLE MARIAN went with her mother into a country village to stay for a few weeks. She was delighted to be away from the shops and the street cars and live in the real country, as she called it. They rented a pretty little house, around which was a garden bright with spring flowers. All kinds of tulips were coming out, and hyacinths too, and father off were fields and woods.
One afternoon when Marian’s father and her uncle went out to see them, they all went for a walk through the fields. When they came to a shady pond the uncle took off his coat, turned up his sleeve to his elbow, and kneeling down by the edge of the pond, put his hand into the muddy water and brought up some slimy-looking mud, which he put into a large jar.
Then he dipped the jar deep down into the water, and brought it up filled. Swimming about in it were dozens of queer, wriggling little wormy things of a dull brownish color, which soon showed that they disliked the light, and they hid away in the mud.
Marian took the jar home with her, and every day she watched the wriggling may-fly grubs and added a little fresh water. A large butterfly net was put over the jar.
In a few days a wonderful thing happened. The little grubs seemed to be tired of living in the mud at the bottom of the jar, and one by one they came slowly up to see what it looked like in clearer water. At last Marian saw one of them fasten its little body to a piece of dry leaf which was floating on the surface. It seemed very tired and lazy, and lay quite still on the leaf.
“Now, Marian,” said her mother, “watch closely and see what will happen to it.”
It lay still for some time and looked quite dead: Marian said it was dead. The skin of the grub grew harder and more brittle and all of a sudden crack went the skin, and out-from the body of the grub crept a little fly-like creature. It was wet, poor thing, so it opened its wing’s and stretched them in the sun to dry, and then to Marian’s joy and surprise it began to try to fly.
“Take a good look at it before we lift the net and let it fly away,” said Marian’s mother. “Don’t you think it very wonderful that a wormy creature can be changed into a may-fly? Only God can do such things. He will do something like this some day for all of us who love the Lord Jesus and believe that He died to save us from our sins. He will draw us up from this chill, cold earth into the glorious sunshine where He is, and we shall be changed as we go, and made like Christ.
“These little creatures teach us lessons and show us God’s power and His interest in the smallest of the living things He has made. The little grub was drawn by an unseen power from the mud to the clearer water, where the light and the sunshine helped to make a perfect insect ready for flight. So the Lord Jesus lifts many a child from the mud and the mire of sin into His light and His sunshine, and there fits them for the time when He will come and change their bodies and make them like His body of glory.
“Some children are still in the mud and the dark, like the grubs at the bottom of the pond! Some have left the mud, hang had their sins washed away in the blood of the Lord Jesus, and are waiting for Him to come to change them.”
If you, dear reader, are still in the mud, do come to Jesus now.
ML-11/17/1935