Grandmother San and little Koto San sat sipping their tea one chilly fall day. Tiny box stoves with bits of burning charcoal in them were on their laps, little quilted blankets were across their shoulders, and they sat on their feet to keep them warm!
"My, but I wish I had enough money to buy some new wallpaper!" Grandmother said thoughtfully between sips of tea.
"Oh, yes, let's get some, Grandmother!" cried Koto San eagerly. "Maybe it wouldn't cost too much, and it would be nice to have some pretty new paper! Please, do try to get some!"
"Ai yah! It is hard to be so poor. We really do need the paper, for it would make the room warmer for the winter, but I'm afraid that I can get nothing with the little bit of money that I have!"
The next morning Grandmother proudly watched Koto San as she skipped away to the mission school. Koto San was a bright little girl, and already she could read better than many other children her age. Grandmother had wondered if she were doing right when she first allowed her to go to the school, for the priests had taught her to hate the "foreign devils" as they called the missionaries. But Koto San must have an education, and it was the cheapest way Grandmother knew of. To soothe her conscience Grandmother had forbidden Koto San to ever bring home the "foreign devil's terrible book"-the Bible.
Koto San had learned to love the Lord Jesus as she had heard about Him from the missionaries, and often she longed to tell Grandmother how the wonderful Lord Jesus loved her, too, and had died for her sins. But she was afraid Grandmother might no longer allow her to go to the mission school, so she kept her secret in her heart, and prayed for her Grandmother.
After Koto San was gone Grandmother put on her bright kimona with its big sleeves and wide sash. Taking her bit of money she hurried away on her tiny feet to the market.
What a busy, noisy place it was! And, oh-what wonderful things there were to buy-if only one had the money! At the shops that sold wallpaper Grandmother was thrilled with the lovely paper she saw, but again and again she shook her head. It was just as she feared, she did not have enough money!
Turning sadly homeward, Grandmother walked more slowly. As she passed a neat little house she noticed what a lovely grassy lawn it had. True, it was but a tiny strip of grass, but most houses near the market had none at all.
What was that lying upon the grass? Could it be a box? Had someone thrown it away?
Grandmother looked up and down the narrow street. No one was in sight. Crossing the lawn quickly, she stooped and picked up the box. Opening it cautiously she peeked inside.
Oh! Oh! How wonderful! The box was full of paper-paper that had pretty writing marks all over it that meant nothing to Grandmother who could not read! The sheets of paper were not large, but there were so many of them that perhaps there would be enough to cover the walls of her room!
Once again Grandmother looked up and down the street, then again at the little house. No one seemed to be watching. Anyway, the box seemed to have been thrown away, Grandmother reasoned with her conscience. Though why would anyone throw away a whole box of such pretty paper?
Without waiting any longer she tucked the box into her big sleeve, and holding it close to her side, she hurried home as fast as her feet would take her.
Mixing the paste took but a few moments, and when little Koto San returned home from the mission school, Grandmother had quite a bit of one wall already papered.
"Oh, Grandmother, how nice!" she cried happily. "You did get some paper, and such pretty paper! I have never seen wallpaper just like this before!"
Koto San went closer to the wall, and suddenly she caught her breath! For a moment she looked frightened as she glanced quickly at Grandmother, and then back at the paper. Grandmother was calmly going on with her work. Koto San's eyes began to twinkle and sparkle! In fact, she had to clap one hand tightly over her mouth lest the secret jump right out-for Koto San knew something about that paper that Grandmother did not.
Grandmother was pasting the Bible-the "foreign devil's book"-on her walls! Because Grandmother could not read she did not know that the box of paper she had found was a Bible. Koto San could hardly keep from dancing up and down on her toes with joy. Why, now she would not need to feel sorry she could not bring her precious Bible home, for there it would be, all over the walls, just waiting for her to read it!
"Please, Honorable Grandmother," she said politely and eagerly. "May I help you put it on the walls, too? I shall do it ever so carefully and nicely. Perhaps I could put it down lower where it would hurt your back to reach."
Grandmother said she might if she were careful not to spill the paste or spoil a single piece of the precious paper. So Koto San hunted eagerly through the Bible for her favorite stories and Scripture passages. In fact, she was so eager to get the parts that she loved the most before Grandmother did that the work went very quickly indeed!
It took them several days to finish the room, but when they did finish, Grandmother and Koto San surveyed their work proudly. My, it did look nice!
"And to think it didn't cost me anything!" Grandmother was thinking.
"And to think I can read the Bible whenever I wish!" Koto San was thinking.
After that, as they sat sipping their tea together, Koto San would sit close to the wall so she could read. Often she wished she dared to tell Grandmother her secret, but suppose that Grandmother would tear the paper from the wall if she knew!
One day Koto San thought, "I'll tell her just a little bit, and see if it makes her angry."
"Grandmother-sometimes as I sit here drinking tea the wallpaper talks to me!"
"Talks to you? Why, what nonsense, child!" She turned to look at the wall beside her. "I cannot hear anything. Who ever heard of wallpaper talking?"
"But it does!" insisted Koto San.
"Well, what does it say if it talks to you?" Grandmother asked unbelievingly.
"Well," began Koto San slowly, "right here it tells how the great God up in heaven made the sun, moon, and the stars, and all the wonderful world we live in!" and she read to Grandmother from the first chapters of Genesis.
"How wonderful!" Grandmother exclaimed, hardly able to believe it. "Does it really say that? How strange that I cannot hear it talk!" and she bent her ear to the wall. "Does it say anything else?"
"Oh, yes! It tells me here how God made and put the first people in this wonderful world, and how He blessed them. But one day they disobeyed God and did very wickedly!" and Koto San read to Grandmother the sad story of how sin entered the world when Adam and Eve listened to Satan and disobeyed God by eating of the tree He had forbidden them.
"Ai yah! Ai yah! How sad! Does the wallpaper say God punished them?"
"God said they must surely die. If they had not disobeyed, they would have lived forever!"
"Does the wallpaper tell more? Something about that story talks to my heart, too, for my heart is sometimes wicked! Must God punish me too?" Grandmother wondered softly. "We must listen again tomorrow and see if it will tell us more."
After that Grandmother was eagerly awaiting Koto San's return from school to tell her more that the wallpaper had to say, and Koto San gladly read on and on. So it was, in time, that Grandmother learned the good news that God sent His Son into the world to die for all who had sinned against Him. When she learned that God loved her, and that she could accept His Son as her Savior, she trembled for joy! Could these wonderful words be true?
Then one morning after Koto San had run away to school, she put on her pretty kimona again, and hurried away down the street. The burden on her heart to know whether this wonderful love story were true or not had grown so great that she had decided she must find out today! And who would be able to tell her if not the priest, who knew all things about the gods?
At the temple door she timidly knocked, then bowed low when the priest appeared, calling him a most wonderful, honored being, and herself a worthless bit of mud! Then with the words fairly tumbling over one another she began to tell him of the wonderful wallpaper that talked!
As the priest listened to the story of the Lord Jesus he drew himself erect, and with a cold glitter in his eyes suddenly interrupted her story with the words, "It is the 'foreign devil's book' you have upon your walls!" and in anger he slammed the door before her face!
Grandmother stood trembling. Was that really what was on her walls-that terrible Book? But somehow she could not feel angry! Why-why-if that were the Bible, that was a good Book! Every word she had heard was holy and good, and made her heart hate sin, and long to be clean. Oh, if only it were true! She turned toward home with her head drooping and tears slowly dropping on the dusty street.
Then a thought came to her. Perhaps the people who lived in the house where she had found the Book could tell her if the story were true. Would they be angry, too, and think she had stolen the Book? But Grandmother was so anxious to have her questions answered that she went bravely on to the little house.
When a foreign white woman opened the door, Grandmother almost lost her tongue. For a moment she forgot her politeness and could only stare at the green eyes and hair the color of straw. But the lady was smiling and inviting her in, and before Grandmother knew it, she was sitting on a couch and pouring out her story again. The missionary listened quietly until Grandmother finished, and then she went to a table and came back with her Bible in her hand to sit beside Grandmother. As she opened the Book, Grandmother grew more excited.
"There it is! That's just the same as my wallpaper! Oh, tell me-please, tell me, is it true? Does God really love me?"
With joy in her face the missionary cried, "He does! He does! See here, Tor God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life'! And He says, 'Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out'!"
Before the missionary could say much more Grandmother was on her knees, weeping her thanks to God for loving a poor old Japanese woman enough to send the Lord Jesus to die for her sins.
Then getting quickly to her feet she said, "I am sorry, but I must go quickly now. Thank you, oh, thank you for all you have told me!" and she hurried away with a shining face.
When Koto San got home, Grandmother met her at the door.
"Oh, Koto San! What do you think I found out today? Our wallpaper is really the Bible!"
For a moment Koto San was frightened, but then she saw the joy on Grandmother's face.
"And best of all, Koto San," she hurried on to say, "I found out that it is true! It is all true! Oh-this is too good news to keep to ourselves! No one else in all of Japan has wallpaper that talks! Listen, little Koto San, run up and down the street and knock on all of our neighbors' doors, and invite the ladies to come to our house for a cup of tea, and to listen to the wallpaper talk."
Koto San gladly obeyed, and soon a curious circle of Japanese women sat in their little room sipping fragrant tea and listening in wonder to the wallpaper talk as Koto San read to them.
"Truly, it is wonderful!" they said. "It is wonderful that you have wallpaper that talks, but it is even more wonderful that it tells us such good things of a God that loves us."
"We will gladly come again," they said as they left. And so it was that many little gatherings were held in Grandmother's tiny house as women came in to hear the wonderful things the wallpaper had to say.