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“Who is that?” she asked her dad. How could she know the question would trouble his heart—a heart that was wrestling with deep questions.
| “Won’t they let him in?” |
A pause, and then: “Won’t they let him in?”
Unease began to grow in the man, but he could hardly brush her off, so he quietly said: “No they won’t let him in.”
Quick as light, she asked: “Is he bad?”
And he shot back just as fast: “No! He isn’t bad.”
Faster still, she demanded: “Well, then, why won’t they let him in?”
Now he was really uneasy He’d had enough, and as he gently but firmly walked her away from the picture, he heard himself say in a tone too terse: “How do I know?” She sensed the tension and said no more, but every now and then, big, dark, round eyes glanced at him and then in the direction of the portrait. She knew he knew some-thing he wasn’t telling her.
At supper no word was said about it, but the eyes kept talking. After supper she got ready for bed, and with pajamas on and with toothpaste still around her mouth, she climbed up on his lap and hugged his neck longer than usual. Then she kissed him, headed for the bedroom, stopped, turned, and said: “We’d let him in, wouldn’t we?”
Then off she went to sleep like a rock, while all through a grown man’s sleepless night God pried his heart open with a child’s words.
I’m told that just like my father-in-law, Johnny Martin, the man “let him in.”
Adapted from Jesus: Hero of Thy Soul by Jim McGuiggan (1998, Howard Publishing Company).
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Edited by Phil Ware and Paul Lee.
Adapted from “Jesus: Hero of Thy Soul” by Jim McGuiggan (1998, Howard Publishing Company). Used by permission.
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May be reprinted and reused for non-commercial purposes only if copyright credits are appropriately displayed.