you, with a special kind o f love, and I will not forget you, ever.” (Debbie’s “Grandma” was read ing Isaiah 49:15, re-wording the passage so that the little girl could understand it.) “ How old are you, dear?” asked the woman. “ I’m eleven.” “Would you like to know what happened to me when I was your “ All right.” “Like you, I lost my mother. She didn’t just go away for a while. She died. I remember how terribly empty and lost I felt al though, like you, I had a kind and loving father. It seemed to me that the whole world had crum pled up and I didn’t know what to do about it.” For the first time, Debbie lis tened intently. “ Then one day someone told me about the Lord Jesus — how I could receive Him into my heart as my Saviour and how He would be there always to love and help me. I read in the Bible that He— the Lord Jesus — said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ ” “Grandma” smiled as she said, “Now many years have passed.” “ Yes, I know,” Debb ie ob served. “You are pretty old, aren’t you ?” “All these years have helped me to know that what God says is absolutely true. I’ve proved this. As we love Him more and more, He will take the lonesomeness right out of our hearts. He did that for me.” “Grandma,” Debbie spoke the word softly, “ could you say for me again those words about me, that you found in the book?” So the precious truth was re peated, “ . . . yea, they may forget, yet will not I forget thee.” “You know what?” Debbie asked. “While you were saying the words, I asked the Lord Jesus to come into my heart. The lone someness is going away already. I think this is going to be the hap piest Christmas I ever had.”
J U N I O R K IN G 'S B U S I N E S S
Debbie’s Happ iest Christmas
by Mildred M. Cook
Debbie answered. “ I don’t even have a mother.” Debbie’s father exp la ined : “Her mother walked out on us— on me and the four kids. Three years ago. I can’t get her to come back, though I keep trying. She’s living with someone else that she says she likes better than us. So what do I do? What can I do but send the kids around from place to place to any of the relatives who will keep them for a while? Debbie has lived in half a dozen homes in these three years.” Just then the loud speaker blared out the good news, “ Flight No. 562 for Denver—loading at Gate 5,” and Debbie and her new Grandma hurried aboard. For a long time the child pressed her face against the cold round window pane and peered at the slow-moving wintertime pic ture of white and green and spar kling lights in the little towns they were flying over. When she looked up, she saw her “Grand ma” was reading a book. “Debbie,” the woman said quietly. “ I’ve just found some thing wonderful in this book. “ It says, ‘Can a woman forget her own little child, the one that was born to her? Yes, she may forget. But I—the Lord—will not be like that. I will always love
A r m s w e r e l o a d e d with gaily wrapped packages. Hands clutched airplane tickets, their owners impatient for the gates to open so they could board their planes. Almost everyone in the big waiting room o f the interna tional airport looked eager to be going home — or to somebody else’s home—for Christmas. Debbie didn’t want to go any where. She was traveling to Den ver all by herself and she didn’t like the idea. Inside her thin brown coat she shivered a little. Her eyes were full of lonesome ness. A big man was with her, stand ing on the other side of the low railing that separated passengers from visitors. He patted her arm. “Honey,” he said, “ you’ll like the Denver country. You really will. And I’ll see you again next summer. It won’t be long.” Debbie looked up, unsmiling. That was when she saw the grey haired lady sitting beside her. “ She’s my youngest of four,” Debbie’s father told the lady. “ She’s going to live with my sis ter, on a ranch.” “Well,” the grey-haired lady smiled at Debbie, “ I’d certainly like to have you for a grand daughter.” “ I don’t have any Grandma,”
DECEMBER, 1966
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