“MIND you do not touch that pear,” said a father to his little boy, as they stood together one day in the garden looking at a large pear, the sole produce of their only pear-tree; “I want to give it to your mother when it is ripe.”
The little fellow, like most other children, was very fond of pears, and as, day by day, he saw this one ripen, the green tint giving way to the golden, he kept on thinking how nice it would taste.
At last a day came when the father said, “I think by tomorrow it will be ripe enough to pick for your mother.”
Bad thoughts arose in that little boy’s mind. “I must have that pear,” said he to himself; and soon he resolved to take it after dark. “Mother and father will think someone has jumped over the wall and stolen it; they will never think I took it.”
Accordingly, that night, he waited for some time after he had heard his father close his bedroom door, and then, jumping from his bed, he crept downstairs, and out into the garden.
Very likely he looked back at the windows as he stepped on tip-toe towards the tree, thinking, “Father might have heard a sound.” How truly do our consciences make cowards of us all, unless they have been purged by the blood of Christ.
He reached the tree, and stretched out his hand towards the pear, which, in the dim light, he could just see hanging before him. Another moment, and the stem would have been broken, when four words rang in his ears, as plainly as though someone had repeated them:
“Thou—God—seest—me.”
His hand fell to his side in an instant! He had been careful—very careful—that neither father nor mother should see, but he had never thought that God would see. Neither did you, young reader, when you were disobedient—when you spoke those cross, angry words, and lost your temper, the other day. No! you did not think of those four words, “Thou God seest me.”
Quietly he crept back to his room, and fell on his knees by his bedside. God saw him, and knew not only about that act, but about all his sins, everyone.
What reality he felt in those words, “Thou God seest me”! He could not rest till he knew his sins were all forgiven, all washed away in Jesus’ precious blood.
Dear young reader have you felt the solemn, awful reality of those words to you, a sinner, “Thou God seest me”? Yes, He sees you unforgiven, uncleansed, without a Saviour, but with your sins, going on, not to heaven, but to the eternal darkness.
Own to God you are lost and helpless, and turn to the Lord Jesus. He has died for sinners just like you; His precious blood has been shed, and God thinks it of so much value, that His word declares, “The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all [or every] sin.” (1 John 1:77But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. (1 John 1:7).)
What joy, what peace, what comfort this gives the child who trusts the Lord Jesus. As for the past, his sins are gone forever as far as the east is from the west; as to the present, the sunshine of God’s infinite love, and the knowledge that He who died for him is now in glory living for him; and, as to the future, brightest glory with Jesus Himself.
Then the words, “Thou God seest me,” instead of being a terror, are a comfort, as they were to Hagar. Yes, it is then a comfort to think that God, whom he can now call Father, sees him, and will surely care for and help him day by day.
Dear child, may you trust the Saviour, and know your sins are put away, and all that you were as a guilty sinner met by the death of Christ. Thus, instead of a terror, the fact may be a joy and comfort that, “Thou God sees me.”
ML 01/12/1902