FAULT-FINDING.
"WHAT makes sis look so cross," said a father sometime ago, as his little girl sat down to the breakfast table with a long, sour face. "Perhaps what we have to eat is not good enough for her." The table around which we were gathered was supplied with plenty of plain food, but that foolish little girl was not satisfied with it. Children so often find fault with what they have to eat and wear, and yet they have never once known what it is to really want for any good thing.
When I was eight years old, my father left us to come to America to find a home. He had been gone nearly one year when he sent for us to come.
Mother started for America with her family of six children to meet father.
How our hearts rejoiced as we went to Antwerp, Belgium, where we were to take ship to cross the great ocean, where our father was! How we talked of the happy meeting in seeing father once more after so long a separation!
As we had taken ship on an old sailing vessel and did not have good winds, we were fifty-four days on the ocean without seeing land. We were at sea so much longer than had been expected that provision and water failed us, and there were many hungry men, women, and children. How we longed to see land where we could get plenty to eat and drink!
When I see children finding fault with what they have, though it may be very plain, my mind goes back to the time when we suffered through hunger and thirst; and I feel as if these little fault-finders are very ungrateful to God for what he so kindly provides for them. And how unlike Jesus this is. While most of us have homes and kind friends, he had not where to lay his head. Jesus went about doing good; and although he had a hard time, he never found fault.
Let us try to imitate this dear Saviour in all that we do, and ask him every day to make us fit to dwell in that home which he has gone to prepare for his people. And if you are so happy as to reach that home, you will not be so sad and disappointed as we were when we reached Wisconsin and found that father had been dead and buried four weeks.
M. E.