The Lame Take the Prey
Illustration★★★In human life a man who is lame any way misses the prey, misses the prize; but weakness has a fascination for God, and those who have lost everything that this world can give come off best with our Heavenly Father. I got an illustration of this the other day when I happened to be staying at a farmhouse.
With one ex- ception the family consisted of robust, hearty children, but there was one little lame boy. Whilst I was stay- ing there came in a great hamper of apples, and at once all the boys and girls in the family, having eyed them wistfully, proceed to take the apples. The little lame fellow, with his puny, wan face, looked eagerly as the apples disappeared, and no one thought of him till mother came, a bustling, quick-tempered woman. She said, “What is that you are doing?
Put all those apples back again, I tell you.” And very ruefully they replaced them. “Now,” she said, “Jimmy, you come and take your pick.”
And the little lame fellow on the crutch took the ripest and juiciest, and went back with a flush on his pale cheeks. Then mother said to the other children, “Now, do what you like with the rest.”
I saw how in mother’s love the lame take the prey (Isa. xxxiii. 23).-REV. F. B.
MEYER, B.A.
The point
F.B. Meyer recalls a farmhouse where a mother made her healthy children return stolen apples so her lame son could choose first, illustrating that God gives weakness the same tender priority.