Mr. Dale was a grown-up man. You would never think he would be interested in dolls. He didn’t think he was either.
It was “junk-collection day.” At least once a year people could throw out trash from their basements, attics, garages. yards, or from anywhere. They would pile this junk near the curb, and big-city dump trucks would pick it up. The trucks carried away the old, worn-out, useless things and took them to the city dump.
My, what a lot of no-good things there were: pieces of old, rotten wood, broken chairs, worn- out mattresses, old rugs, torn window shades, broken toys, and all kinds of dirty, broken things.
Mr. Dale was driving to work on the morning of junk collection. As he looked at all the piles of junk along the curbs, he suddenly saw a face looking out of one of these piles. It was a dirty face with a mass of tangled, matted hair . . . some little girl’s old doll.
Suddenly, Mr. Dale thought of his own daughter when she had been small. She was going to college now. But when she was a little girl, she just loved dolls. And here looking at Mr. Dale with sad, round eyes was something that once had been a lovely doll. She could be cleaned up and dressed with new clothes. He was sure some little girl would be happy to have her.
So Mr. Dale stopped the car and backed up. He pulled the doll out of the junk pile and put her in the trunk. Then off he went to work.
That night when he arrived home, Mr. Dale showed the doll to his wife.
“Poor thing!” Mrs. Dale exclaimed. “She sure is a mess, but nothing on her is broken. I think I could fix her up to be just as pretty as she once was!”
Yes, she was really dirty. Her hair was a mess and her 29-inch body hadn’t been washed for a very long time. But it wasn’t long before the doll was getting a good scrubbing and a shampoo.
After she was cleaned up, Mrs. Dale made her some new clothes. How pretty the doll was now! Then they had to decide what to do with her.
“I know what I’ll do with this doll,” said Mrs. Dale, “I think my cousin Marian might like to have her.” Miss Marian was a lady who lived 35 miles away. She had many little friends. These young friends came twice a week to Miss Marian’s house to hear Bible stories about the Lord Jesus. They liked to hold something while they listened. How happy they would be to have this beautiful, clean, just-like-new doll to love and hold!
So that’s just what happened. The doll was named Barbara, which was Mrs. Dale’s first name, because she had helped to make the doll so beautiful.
Now the little girls take turns holding the doll when they listen to a story. Miss Marian never forgets to tell them how Barbara was once a poor, dirty, ruined doll going to the trash dump. But Mr. Dale found her and rescued her. Then she explains to her little friends how that’s just what the Lord Jesus does for us. Mr. Dale found Barbara the doll and saved her, and the Lord Jesus finds boys and girls and saves them from their sins if they will let Him. He washes away their sins in His own precious blood, and dresses them in His own sinless loveliness. Then He gives them His own name. Everyone who belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ is called a Christian—and that means a “Christ One.”