MANY years ago a lady sat in the veranda of her Burmese home endeavoring to decipher the scarcely legible characters of a palm leaf book which lay in all its awkwardness before her. As the lady bent over her book, she was suddenly interrupted by a strange-looking figure bounding through the opening in the hedge which served as a gateway, and, rushing towards her with great eagerness inquiring, “Does Jesus Christ live here?”
He was a boy about 12 years of age, his course black hair matted with filth and bristling in every direction like the quills of a porcupine, and a very dirty cotton cloth was thrown about his person.
“Does Jesus Christ Live Here?”
he inquired, rushing uninvited into the veranda, and throwing himself at the lady’s feet.
“What do you want Jesus Christ for?” asked the lady.
“I want to see Him, and confess to Him.”
“Why, what have you done that you want to confess?”
“Does He live here?” he asked with great earnestness, “I want to know that. Doing? ‘Why, I tell lies, I steal, I do everything bad, I am afraid of going to hell, 1 want to see Jesus Christ, for I heard one of the Loogyees say that He can save us from going there. O! tell me where I can find Jesus Christ.”
“I want to stop doing wickedly, but I can not stop; the evil thoughts are in me and the bad deeds will come. What shall I do?”
Have you, my reader, like this poor Karen boy, discovered the evil of your own heart, and felt the awful load of sin which must shut you out of Heaven unless put away by the finished work of Christ? In answer to this question the lady replied,
“Nothing; but come to Christ, dear boy, like the rest of us.” This is English which he did not understand.) “You cannot see Jesus now (she was interrupted by a sharp, quick cry of despair), but I am His humble follower, and He has commissioned me to tell all those who wish to escape from hell how to do so.” The look of despair gave place to one of hope.
“Tell me, O! tell me! Only ask your Master, Jesus, to save me, and I will be your slave for life. Do not send me away, I want to be saved—saved from hell.”
How glad was that lady to point the dear boy to the Saviour, to ‘unfold that lovely story of God’s love to sinners, and to tell him of Calvary’s, work, on the ground of which even a poor, wild Karen Loy could be saved.
Dear reader, you live in a land of Bibles, and the gospel is perhaps well known to you, but if your sins have never troubled you, as they did the Karen boy, think, oh! think of them NOW. Be in earnest.
“Those that seek ME early shall find ME,” but think of that day when there will be no sweet gospel to preach, and when the One now offered as Saviour will be the Judge of that day.
ML-08/18/1935