August 18

"A damsel came to hearken, named Rhoda."—Acts 12:13.

I LIKE this sweet Judæan Rose—the maid whose name was Rhoda. She has "an Oriental fragrancy" about her.

She says to me: Anybody can be the friend of Jesus. It does not matter how young you are—no, nor how poor and humble you are. I was only a girl, and, more than that, I was only a slave-girl. Yet He had a place for me, so simple and lowly and unpretending, in His home and His heart. Ah, He despises none; He casts out none; He waits for you.

And she says to me: You can please Him in the common everyday tasks. It was my work to answer the door, nothing sublimer or loftier than that; and I left off praying to go and do it. And my answering the door helped Him as truly as my praying did. So remember that you can honour Him in the most trivial and ordinary affairs of the quietest and meanest life.

And again she says to me: See that you have a trust in Him which nothing will shake. The brethren would not believe me when I told them that Peter was safe and well outside; but I—I confidently affirmed that it was even so. Do you the same. If you cannot argue with people, bid them go down to the door and see for themselves. For One better than Peter is waiting to enter there. Behold, Jesus cries, I stand and knock. If any man open the door, I will come in.

Indeed, I thank the damsel Rhoda for her wholesome and uplifting lessons. Peter is one of the great mountains in the kingdom of the Bible; Rhoda is a wild flower in the hedge by the roadside. But both mountain and flower have their message for me, and I can part with neither.