Christian life -- Fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction
My dear little Una has improved somewhat in health, but I am never
free from anxiety about her. She is my milk-white lamb, my dove, my
fragrant flower. One cannot look in her pure face without a sense of
peace and rest. She is the sentinel who voluntarily guards my door
when I am engaged at my devotions; she is my little comforter when I
am sad, my companion and friend at all times. I talk to her of
Christ, and always have done, just as I think of Him, and as if I
expected sympathy from her in my love to Him. It was the same with my
darling Ernest. If I required a little self-denial, I said
cheerfully, "This is hard, but doing it for our best Friend sweetens
it," and their alacrity was pleasant to see. Ernest threw his whole
soul into whatever he did, and sometimes when engaged in play would
hesitate a little when directed to do something else, such as
carrying a message for me, and the like. But if I said, "If you do
this cheerfully and pleasantly, my darling, you do it for Jesus, and
that will make Him smile upon you," he would invariably yield at
once.
Is not this the true, the natural way of linking every little daily
act of a child's life with that Divine Love, that Divine Life which
gives meaning to all things?
But what do I mean by the vain boast that I have always trained my
children thus? Alas! I have done it only at times; for while my
theory was sound, my temper of mind was but too often unsound. I was
often and often impatient with my dear little boy; often my tone was
a worldly one; I often full of eager interest in mere outside things,
and forgot that I was living or that my children were living save for
the present moment.
It seems now that I have a child in heaven, and am bound to the
invisible world by such a tie that I can never again be entirely
absorbed by this.
I fancy my ardent, eager little boy as having some such employments
in his new and happy home as he had here. I see him loving Him who
took children in His arms and blessed them, with all the warmth of
which his nature is capable, and as perhaps employed as one of those
messengers whom God sends forth as His ministers. For I cannot think
of those active feet, those busy hands as always quiet. Ah, my
darling, that I could look in upon you for a moment, a single moment,
and catch one of your radiant smiles; just one!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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