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TH E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
I UN I OR KING ' S
A NUMBER of years ago, In a part / \ of India to which no mission- jL JL aries are allowed to go, a wee baby giil was bom. Her skin was smooth and brown, she had soft brown eyes, and her hair was very black. Her mother and father thought she was a beautiful baby, and so did their friends. They gave her the lovely name of Chandra Leela, which means Playing Moon. When Playing Moon w a s only seven years old, she was married. For a little girl of that age to be mar ried seems a very strange thing to us. But in India, many of the people do not know about the Lord Jesus Christ. Consequently, almost everything they do is different from what we, Chris tians, think is right. For Playing Moon, the wedding festival was a happy time. It meant new clothes, pretty rings and other kinds of jew elry, and lots of good things to eat After the ceremony, something else happened about which we would be very much surprised: Instead of go ing to the home of her new husband, Playing Moon stayed right at home with her mother and father, and the young boy to whom she had been married went home with his parents. Playing Moon would have to stay with her parents until she was old enough to keep house, and her young husband would have to stay with his mother and father until he was old enough to work and earn a living for his wife. Two happy years passed, and then one day some bad news came to Playing Moon’s home. A messenger came, saying that her boy bridegroom had died. Playihg Moon and her mother and father felt very bad about this, and one day soon afterwards, when Playing Moon came into the house from helping her father with his work in the field, she found her mother crying. “O, Mother,” said Playing Moon as she put her arms around her moth er, “it makes me sad to see you cry.” “My little girl,” sobbed her mother, “you do not understand. Now I shall have to cut off all your beautiful hair, and take from you all your pretty clothes and rings and all the rest of your jewelry.”
“But Mother!” Playing Moon was astonished. “I do not understand. What have I done?” - “No, I have never told you this, my dear. In our country, when a hus band dies, the wife is believed to be to blame, and so she must have noth ing beautiful, and she must try very hard to have her sins forgiven.” This made Playing Moon and her mother and her father very unhappy; but they had always done their best to carry out all the teachings of their sacred books, so they all tried to be brave about doing this very hard thing. A few days lat
the money which her father had given her, and hired two servant girls to go with her. Together they started on the long journey. For months the girls trudged along India’s dusty roads, they worshiped in the great temples, they repeated prayers and often they bathed in the rivers which they thought were holy; but after all of this, Playing Moon still felt that her sins had not been forgiven. Many years passed, and Playing Moon became very much discouraged. She threw away her idol and her sa cred books. One day she met a Christian wom an. The woman loved the Lord Jesus Christ very much, and when she looked into Playing Moon’s troubled brown eyes, she knew that this young woman needed the Saviour. “Would you like to hear about my wonderful Friend?” she asked Play ing Moon one day. “For seventeen years I have been looking for forgivëness for my sins,’’ answered Playing Moon. “If this Friend of yours can give me that, I would like to hear about Him.” Then the Christian woman told Playing Moon all about the Lord Je sus, about His love for her, His will ingness to forgive her sins, and about His power to keep her from sin. Play ing Moon asked the Lord Jésus to come Into her heart, and to be her Saviour. For the first time since she was a little girl, she was happy, and her heart felt warm and peaceful. From then, until she was an old, old lady, Playing Moon went on many long journeys, to the sime sacred temples which she had visited in her early life; but it was not to worship the idols there. She went to tell the people about the one true God, our Heavenly Father, and about his Son, our Lord Jesus. The people listened eagerly to her story, and many of them turned from worshiping the ugly idols of wood and stone to the One who can truly save us from our sins. Playing Moon was a very happy missionary.
er Playing Moon’s father called her to his side and said, “Come, my daughter, I want to begin to teach you to read and to write." Playing M o o n w a s very happy about t h i s, for none of the little girls or women she knew could either r e a d or write. The books she
learned to r e a d were very differ- e n t f r o m t h e books we have in America for boys and girls. They all were about her religion—Hinduism. Playing Moon studied a great deal, and her father was very proud of her. By the time Playing Moon had grown to be a young lady, her mother and father had both died, and one day when she was reading her sacred books she found there the words that told her that if she would go to the four corners of India to worship at its great temples, she might hope to get forgiveness for the sins which had caused the death of her young: hus band. Playing Moon took some of
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