GROWING CHILDREN

I remember, as a small boy, being taken from time to time to visit an aged and blind widow. Each time she would put her hands to the top of my head and exclaim how much I had grown. That, of course, was but the normal thing for a child's youthful body. Increase in soul and spirit should go with such growth and is by the true knowledge of God. Timothy, in childhood, had known the sacred letters which would develop him by faith in Christ Jesus. A child growing up in the physical way would at first be able to reach up and touch something, but in time would be able to grasp it. Paul desired that Timothy should lay hold of, or seize, eternal life of which he already had knowledge.

Our heavenly Father looks for us to grow up in the standard of His thoughts for us. When the boy Samuel's mother came each year to see him she would expect him to fit the new and larger coat which she had made for him. No doubt the coat had some new feature of which he would be worthy. There have been times when God's work depended on quite young persons such as Samuel, the shepherd-boy David, Jonathan, the little maid in Naaman's house, the boy with the loaves and fishes and also Paul's nephew. Can He depend on you?

J.C.Evershed