Two Hands, One Heart

 
Shall I tell you something that happened when I went to school? There was a boy in our class named Billy. He was an active, merry lad who did not like to work. Many a day Billy did not have his ruler, or his book, or his pencil, and he tried the teacher’s patience sorely.
It was a rule in that school that we must erase our mistakes, and not just scratch them out; but how could Billy do this, when he had no eraser?
“If you do not have an eraser tomorrow, Billy,” said the teacher, “I shall punish you.”
Perhaps you can guess that tomorrow found him still without one. The teacher stood by his desk with her ruler uplifted as she asked the question and received the expected answer, “No, Miss, I have no eraser.”
“Have you an eraser?” The teacher repeated the question, and her face gathered its darkest frown. The uplifted ruler came down, gently, slowly, and the teacher passed on to the next pupil, leaving Billy staring in amazement at the new eraser lying on his desk! Where had it come from?
The teacher had two hands, of course, and the other hand had slipped the eraser on his desk just in time. And both hands came from the same heart!
There are many children, perhaps reading this paper, who need an “eraser” worse than Billy did. You need an “eraser” to rub out your sins from the sight of the Lord. Have you one? The hand of God is justly uplifted to punish you for your sins. What will you do?
God’s hand of mercy lays before you the very “eraser” that you need. He alone is able to blot out your sins with the precious blood of Jesus, and to say, as He said to the poor leper long ago, “I will. Be thou clean.” The hand which provides for your cleansing, comes from the same One who must punish sin because He is holy. He is light as well as love, but His righteous claims against sin were fully met at Calvary. Yes, little one, Jesus loves you. Will you receive His gracious pardon, just as Billy received that eraser? Billy used it too, and his page was made clean. Will you let Jesus cleanse you, making you so clean that God Himself can see you “holy and without blame before Him in love.”
ML 06/24/1956