Let the Children Come

Decades later I was speaking to a group when I challenged parents to “Bring your little one to the Lord Jesus. He has said, ‘Let the children come to me; the kingdom of God is theirs.’” (See Matthew 19:14.)

Then I told how I had made a decision for Jesus when I was five years old.

After that talk I left the platform, and went into a small room in the building where I found a father with two little boys, all on their knees. The father had an arm around both of those boys, and I moved back quietly while the man told the boys tenderly that they were not too young to ask Jesus to come into their hearts.

What a wonderful heritage those boys have, to know that their father cared enough about them to lead them to a knowledge of their heavenly Father!

Later I received a letter from a lady who told me the results in her life of that evening.

I went home after that meeting and went directly to my little girl, Mary, who was in bed. She knew about the Lord because she had been to a Sunday school, but that night, in her bed, she gave her heart to Jesus.

The next morning she said, “Oh, Mommy, I’m so happy that Jesus is now in my heart. He made me a child of God.”

Mary was singing the whole time before she went to school, and I was amazed that she sang many songs about heaven.

My husband went to school to pick her up that day, and as he approached the schoolhouse, he noticed that a great many people were standing around, and there obviously must have been an accident. Then he saw what had happened.

Mary was on the street, her little body crumpled like a rag doll. She was dead.

As I read that letter my eyes were so filled with tears that the words blurred.

Mary had passed behind a big transport truck and had not seen another car, which was coming toward her from the other direction. She was killed immediately.

My husband brought her little body home. He was in deep despair, but then he remembered the songs Mary had sung that morning. I told him what had happened the evening before, and right then, my husband, who had never made a decision for the Lord Jesus, accepted Him as his Savior.

On Mary’s burial day many children of her class came to the Lord.

I sat for a long time with that letter on my lap, realizing that I must have a new sense of urgency to talk to parents about the joy of leading their children to the Lord. What a wonderful assurance Mary’s parents had to know that someday they would be with her again.

During some of my talks I have often repeated this little poem:

SAFE?
Said a precious little laddie,
To his father one bright day,
“May I give myself to Jesus,
Let Him wash my sins away?”

O, my son, but you’re so little,
Wait until you older grow,
Bigger folks ‘tis true, do need Him,
But little folk are safe, you know.

Said the father to his laddie,
As a storm was coming on,
“Are the sheep all safely sheltered,
Safe within the fold, my son?”

“All the big ones are, my father,
But the lambs, I let them go,
For I didn’t think it matter,
Little ones are safe, you know.”
AUTHOR UNKNOWN

-- Corrie ten Boom

* Excerpt taken from "In My Father's House" by Corrie ten Boom