HE DIDN’T EXPECT TO RETURN

We often talk a lot about our great faith in God, but sometimes it takes a child to help us see how miserably we fail:  A gentleman proposed to drive with his wife to the beautiful cemetery beyond the town. Calling his little four-year-old he told him to get ready. The child’s countenance fell, and the father said, “Don’t you want to go, Willie?” The little lip quivered, but the child answered, “Yes, papa, if you wish.” The child was strangely silent during the drive, and when the carriage drove under the wide archway he clung to his mother’s side and looked up in her face with pathetic wistfulness. The party alighted and walked among the graves and along the shaded avenues, looking at the inscriptions. After an hour they returned to the carriage and the father lifted his little son to his seat. The child looked surprised, and drew a breath of relief and asked, “Why, am I going back with you?” “Of course you are; why not?” “I thought when they took little boys to the cemetery they left them there,” he said. As this little child said obediently, “Yes, papa, if you wish,” though he thought he was going to a horrible death, so we should always say, “Yes, Lord,” to any command, though it seems like our death warrant.(Copied)