p. 9 | SUCH AS I HAVE by Hope Ledyard

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 9, 1896

“SUCH AS I HAVE.”

By Hope Ledyard

BY HOPE LEDYARD.

WE parents often needlessly fret over our failures. If we would remember that we are only required to give what we have—that God assumes the responsibility of the withholding—our lives would be much more peaceful. This lesson was taught me afresh the other day by my own boy. I was trying to impress upon him his utter freedom from all responsibility if he would do his best. “Do what you can, then mama will do the rest,” I said, and added, half to myself, “I wish I were a child and could live that way.” “Why, aren’t you God’s child?” said my boy, quick to find comfort for his mother. God, too, only requires of his children such as they have.

But the words have a warning sound, too. Why is it that we parents and teachers fail so often? We try to teach obedience, patience, faith—and the children do not get anything from us. Let us look into our daily lives and see if we have what we are seeking to impart. A gentle, sunny spirit is caught by a child. Have you that sunny spirit? I am finding out more and more as the children grow up that they lack because of the lack in one or the other of their parents, and, though I do not think that it is well to confess this to them, I do think that almost every sin your child commits will lead you, if you examine yourself, to confession and repentance. Again and again every mother can take these words on her lips:—

For they were the failings That I would not see When they were my failings, When they dwelt in me— Little faults unheeded, That I now despise, For my baby took them With my hair and eyes.

And I chide him often, For I know I must; Yet I do it always Bowed down to the dust, With a face all crimson With a burning blush, And an inward whisper That I can not hush.

But then, again, do we give what we have? Impulses come to us again and again. Are we careful to obey them? What we have now may not be ours to-morrow. You heard to-day, it may be, of a friend who is in sorrow, and as your heart ached for her, your impulse was to write her a few words. But you “hate writing,” or on second thoughts were shy of intruding, or you simply “put it off,” and now, even before the day is done, your heart is no longer so keenly alive to her pain, and the note is never written. You had something to give and never gave it.

At certain seasons of the year every woman turns over her store of clothing. There are half-worn shoes and undergarments; there is a dress that Mary has outgrown, and it has lain by for two years. You shake it out. O, dear, it is all riddled by moths! And some child shivered all last winter, or endured the hardship of looking shabby, who might have had that dress. You simply did not give what you had.

O, how this one aspect of these words grows upon me as I write! We are not apt to be careless as to great deeds, but how much oftener we should turn over our possessions, actual and spiritual, and send here and there, if we truly believed what our Lord has said: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”—Christian Work.