A Missionary Twig Part 26

"And p'r'aps dear little Freddie will begin, too, when he gets old enough. You know there are boy bands. But where is Freddie? He was here when I came in."

Just then a high-pitched little voice from the next room called, "Whoop!

Marty!"

"There he is. I wonder what sort of a funny place he's hiding in this time," said Marty, laughing and running to see.

Freddie had taken one of his papa's large handkerchiefs out of the lower drawer of the bureau, and spreading it out over his head was standing in the middle of the room, hiding. How he laughed when Marty found him!

Soon after Mrs. Ashford and Marty began studying the Bible with the help of the concordance, they agreed that it would be pleasant to read a chapter together every night before Marty went to bed. Sometimes she was too sleepy to read more than a few verses, but generally she tried to get ready in good time so that she would be wide enough awake to read a whole chapter, unless it was a very long one.

They were reading in Luke's Gospel now, but the evening of this day Marty said,

"Mamma, mayn't we read that chapter that has in it, 'Here am I; send me'? Miss Stevenson read that verse to us to-day when she was talking about us going, any of us. Do you know where it is?"

"I think I can find it pretty easily," Mrs. Ashford replied. "I know it is in Isaiah. Here it is--the sixth chapter."

They read it, and the eighth verse coming to Marty, she read slowly and reverently,

"Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me."

After they had finished reading, she said,

"I think that is a very hard chapter. The only verses in it that I understand are this one where it says, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts,' and the eighth verse about 'Whom shall I send?'"

"Well," said her mother, "if you understand those two, they will give you plenty to think of, and when you are older you will be able to understand more."

After a moment's silence Marty said,

"You were saying a while ago that I'd have to go to school and learn a great deal before I could be a missionary. I s'pose I'll have to study the Bible a great deal too."

"Oh, of course. I didn't mention that particularly, because I took it for granted you would know that any one who undertakes to show others the way of life must know the way herself, and the Bible is the book that points out that way. You remember Jesus says, 'Search the Scriptures; they are they which testify of me.'"

"But how am I ever to learn? Some people seem to know just where everything is, all the verses that explain other verses, and so on. They can so easily find something in the Old Testament that exactly fits into something in the New Testament. I often wonder how they do it."

"They love the Word of G.o.d, study it, and pray over it."

"I want to love it too," said Marty, pressing her face against the open Bible on her mother's knee. "Whether I'm a missionary or not, I want to be a Christian and do some work for the Lord."