Hosea 13:4
During one particular phase I would make a beeline to the shelf where I knew the Little House books were located. I couldn’t wait to experience the next adventure in the pioneer life of Laura Ingalls Wilder. I read every one of those books several times and when it was turned into a TV series entitled Little House on the Prairie, memories flooded back as I watched each episode with my young children.
I hadn’t thought about those books and the adventures of Laura’s family for a long time, until a friend mentioned that her young granddaughter loved them and was even having a Little House party for her 10th birthday. In fact, she and her family had been watching the DVD series, and she offered to loan them to me. So I began watching a show now-and-then, and one afternoon I saw the one in which Laura’s older sister Mary began to lose her eyesight. Mary was a bright student, but because she couldn’t see her grades began to slip. When her parents became aware, they got her a pair of glasses, and that’s where the trouble began.
Her school friends teased her mercilessly, calling her “four-eyes” and making her life miserable. At first Mary took it in stride, but the day came when she had all she could take, so she hid her glasses in the trunk of a tree, telling her dad she had lost them. She decided she would rather fail in her grades than to endure the relentless teasing of her friends.
As the story unfolded, a spiritual principle also began to unfold within my heart: It’s simply easier to hide one’s faith in Jesus in the trunk of a tree, so to speak, than it is to make it known and thereby risk rejection. It’s less stressful to keep our mouths shut about the Savior, the One who has the great news of eternal life. And as our world becomes more and more intolerant of Christians, the easier it is keep His name quiet.
As for Mary Ingalls, she finally saw the error of her ways. She recovered her glasses and confessed to her father. Oh, that we would do the same in regard to speaking the name of Jesus.
Love and Blessings,
Judy Rose Grubaugh