Memory Verse: “A wise man ... built his house upon a rock ... and it fell not.” Matthew 7:24,26
“Penny! Oh, Penny!”
The twelve-year-old girl put her book to one side and peered down through the leaves that hid her tree house from view. It was Sally and Jim. “Wonder what they want me for?” Her book was interesting, so Penny decided not to answer, and soon they headed back towards their house.
Penny settled herself comfortably and went back to her book. Her tree house was just a platform built high up in three basswood trees that grew so closely together near the ground that they appeared to be one trunk. The big leaves formed shady walls and a roof. Just now the air was filled with the pleasant humming of bees and the scent of the basswood blossoms.
It was a great tree house! It was a place to run to and be alone. The gentle swaying of the trees was like the slight swinging of a hammock. Penny had built it all by herself.
What a hard job it had been to make it good and strong because of working with three trees instead of just one. She had nailed “two by fours” from tree to tree to form a triangle, and then had nailed the floorboards in place.
Penny was a bookworm. She spent many happy hours in her tree house reading the summer she was twelve. During the winter when the winds blew and the weather was stormy the tree house rocked back and forth as the three trees bent this way and that. Somehow the little platform hung together.
When summer came again, Penny couldn’t wait to use her tree house once more. She was thirteen now, and a bigger, heavier girl than she had been the summer before. And the tree house was no longer quite as strong. The nails had twisted and loosened as the three trees bent with the winter wind. But Penny did not think of this.
One day she was settled snuggly with a good book high up in her tree house. As she became really interested in her story she didn’t notice the sky growing dark. The leafy roof kept the first few drops of rain from reaching her, but suddenly the wind set the little platform rocking.
A loud cracking noise beneath her startled Penny. What was happening? It felt like the platform was giving way! A stronger gust of wind—a louder cracking—and Penny was falling!
Just in time she caught the branch of the nearest tree and managed to leap to the ground skinning her knees as she fell. Looking up into the trees she saw her tree house hanging sadly from just one corner!
“I guess I wasn’t very smart to build it in three trees,” Penny said to herself. “That made a poor foundation—as bad as the man who built his house upon the sand! I might have really gotten hurt falling out of that house. I’ll have to build a better one next time!”
Building a life can also be very exciting. But it can also be very sad. It first has to have the right foundation. “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 3:11. Believing on the Lord Jesus Christ and accepting Him as your own personal Saviour is the only foundation that will stand. The Lord Jesus tells of the need to build on a solid foundation in Matthew chapter 7 “Whosoever heareth these sayings of Mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of Mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.” Matthew 7:24-27.
ML-07/13/1980