PD RATHER HAVE YOU THAN HAVE YOUR SLIPPERS!

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 95, 15 September 1948, Page 7

PD RATHER HAVE YOU THAN HAVE YOUR SLIPPERS!

(Contributed by the Ministers’ Association) Dr. Campbell Morgan told the story of a little girl whose mother had died in giving her birth; and she and her father were inseparable. The father seemed to centre all his love upon his little girl. After a time he realised there was a strange indefinable separation coming in between them. He wondered whether as the child was growing older, she would require some other little companion; and whether he could §till fill a mother’s place as he had tried to do in the old days. And that consciousness increased and it gave him a tremendous heartache. On his birthday his daughter came bounding into his room before he was dresed. “O Daddy,” she said, “I.wish you many happy returns of the day,” and she smothered him with kisses. “And, Daddy, I have brought you a lovely present,” and she laid on his bed a very clumsilypacked parcel, with the string tied up in*all directions. Wise man as he was, he took a long time to open that parcel, often saying as he did so, “I wonder whatever it can be!” At last he opened it, and found it contained a pair of slippers. “It is just what I wanted. But you should not have spent your money buying these.” “I did not buy them; I made them,” she said. “I shall appreciate them ever so much more now,” her father said, “but you know I wohld much rather have had you than your slippers. All the time you have been working these slippers Daddy has been desolate. You have done this because you wanted to show your love to me, and all the time you have been withdrawing yourself from my presence.” One wonders if God has to say to some of us busy men and women. “I know you are working those slippers to show your gratitude to me for the wonder of my grace, but I would rather have you than your slippers.” Have we been so busy that we have not kept tryst, with Christ? He wants us. That is the mystery. No man or woman can be what God wants ’them to be unless they are continually in His presence. If we have been guilty of embezzlement towards God, let us face up to it. The world outside wants trueliving men and women of God. God knows the powers of evil are against us, and we want to be right with Him.