God’s Care

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 9, 1908

THE late D. L. Moody once told of a man who enlisted in the war and left a wife and two children. One cold day in November, in the first year of the war, news came that he was shot in battle, and the mother was in great sorrow. Sometime after, the landlord came for his rent, and she told him her trouble, and said she would not be able to pay the rent as regularly as before, as she had only her needle by which she could obtain a livelihood. Sewing-machines were just coming in then, but as she could not buy one, she had a very poor chance. The man said that if she did not pay the rent regularly, he would put her out. After he went away, the mother began to weep. Her child, not quite five, came up to her and said:—

“Mama, is God very rich?”

“Yes, my child.”

“Can’t God take care of us?”

“Then what makes you cry? Mayn’t I go and ask him?”

The mother said that she might if she liked. The little child knelt at her cradle bed, where the mother taught her to pray, and the mother said the child never looked so sweet. She stood weeping over her misfortunes, and the child knelt and said: “O Lord, you have given and taken away dear father, and the landlord says he will turn us out of doors, and my mama has no money. Won’t you lend us a little house to live in?” And then she came out to her mother and said: “Mama, don’t weep. Jesus will take care of us. I know he will, for I have asked him.”

It is upward of twenty years, and that mother has never paid any rent from that day to this. A beautiful cottage was provided for her and her two children, and she has lived there without paying any rent. When the fire swept over Chicago and burned up her house, a second little home was put up for her, and there she is.—Selected.