Junior King's Business MARTHA S. HOOKER, Editor Associate Professor of Christian Education, Biola Bible College
The Easter P r e s s B y Helen Frazee -Bower
E ffie Mae sat on the front steps, the picture of woe. She didn’t want to play with her friends, nor talk to anybody. She just wanted to cry— only she was really too big to cry. Easter was just two Sundays away and she didn’t have a new dress. All the girls in her class were having new things. They whispered about them when they really should have been thinking about the lesson. Effie Mae hadn’t attended Sunday school very long, and she wasn’t sure what it was all about; but it did seem to her that, if the church were really God’s house, it was not quite the place to be talking about new clothes. (Only she did wish she had some to talk about!) She could im agine what it would be like, with all the other girls in their pretty organ dies and nylons, and her in last sum mer’s faded muslin. She guessed she just wouldn’t go to church that day. Her mother called, “ Come, Effie Mae, it’s time to get ready for church. I want to hear those Negro singers tonight.” “ I guess that’s it all right,” Effie Mae muttered. “ She never goes un less there’s something special.” This Friday night the colored Jubilee Singers were giving an evening of music. On the way to church, Father said, “ What’s the matter, Kitten? You’re so quiet.” “ Oh, she’s pouting about her Easter outfit I suppose,” Mother answered. “ She insists that everyone is going to have a new dress but her.” “Well, couldn’t we manage it?” “ On your salary? Hardly! Anyway I think it’s a lot of nonsense— this dressing up for Easter. I’m no Chris tian myself, but if I were, I’d have my mind on something more impor tant than clothes at Easter-time.” “ Perhaps. But she’s just a kid, and
she’s no Christian either—remember. So it may be rather hard on her.” “ She’s no Christian either”—Effie Mae pondered her father’s words. Wasn’t she? She went to Sunday school. She did the best she knew how. Just what was a Christian any way? She was troubled about her father’s remark all the way to church. But she soon forgot it when the music began. She loved to look into the happy faces of the choir as they sang; she loved to listen to their spir ituals—some mournful, like “ Swing Low, Sweet Chariot;” some quick and joyous. Her attention was arrested just now by the words: “ I gotta robe, you gotta robe, All of God’s chillun got robes” . . . “Well, that’s good,” she thought. “ In heaven, at least, she would have a new dress. Only that seemed such a long way off. That was the trouble with heaven—you had to wait so long to get there. But, anyway, it was good to remember that in heaven she would be dressed as well as the others. Then, suddenly she caught a line that made her heart sink. It sounded like: “ Everybody talkin’ about heaven Ain’t goin’ there” . . . Maybe she wouldn’t be there eith er. How did you get there anyway? She didn’t listen to the rest of the music. All she could think about was heaven and the robe; and she was pretty sure now that neither were hers. When- the singers were through the pastor “ extended the invitation.” Effie Mae never had quite understood what that meant. Often she had seen people going up to find out. But, to night, nobody seemed to be going. That is—nobody but herself. For sud denly, without knowing just why, she was slipping out and going up
the aisle. Her mother pulled at her skirt to stop her, but she went right on. Now she could feel the pastor’s hand, warm and kind, enfolding hers; she could hear his voice saying, “We are glad for this little girl who has come. Our Lord said, ‘Of such is the kingdom of heaven.’ ” Effie Mae breathed hard. “ Kingdom of heaven,” she thought. “Maybe she would get there yet.” Later, in the pastor’s study, she confided to him everything — all about her worries concerning heaven, and even about the Easter dress. He told her, in words simple enough for her to understand, how the Lord had come to die for little girls just like her, and to take their sins away. His voice was so kind and gentle that Effie Mae thought that surely God must be a little like that. If He was, heaven would be a happy place, whether she got a robe or not. When she bowed her head to pray, she was happier than she had ever been. Then the pastor was smiling down at her and saying, “ And, Effie Mae, now that you have accepted Christ, you are going to get a new Easter dress, too.” “ Really? From whom?” “ From Him. The Bible says that Jesus not only takes away our sins, but He takes away our self-righteous ness too, which is only filthy rags in God’s sight. Then he clothes us with His own perfect righteousness—the most beautiful robe in the world. ‘The King’s daughter is all glorious within.” So you see you are going to be ‘all dressed up for Easter.’ ” “ All dressed up for Easter”—in a robe given her by Jesus Himself. It would never matter again what she wore on the outside. She was “ all glorious within.” She could hardly wait to tell her mother.
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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