 |
|---|
Resources - Children's Pages
March 2002
Kid's page
A Sad and Sorry Story
Anne Groenenboom
“Mum! Look what Joel is doing!” Carla urged. Mum, who was chatting to
her friend, Mrs Jackson, as she waited at the checkout, looked at Joel
and gasped in horror. Joel had reached out from his stroller and grabbed
an Easter egg from a display and now he was tearing off the foil wrap.
He screamed loudly when Mum took the egg from him and Carla collected
the torn pieces of foil. Suddenly it was Mum’s turn at the checkout and
she stood red-faced with the damaged egg in her hand, not knowing what
to do.
“My little boy took this so I’ll have to pay for it,” she told the girl
on the checkout, as she loaded her groceries quickly onto the counter.
Several shoppers told Mum she shouldn’t pay for the egg, because it
shouldn’t have been put where such a small child could reach it.
“It’s not his fault. He’s too little to know not to touch such lovely
bright things,” one lady reassured Mum, but Mum insisted on paying.
Feeling annoyed and embarrassed, she collected her shopping bags and
hurried off, with Joel still complaining loudly. As Carla walked beside
Mum, she was already thinking about how nice it would be to eat that
lovely chocolate egg.
As Carla helped Mum unpack the groceries, she kept thinking about the
Easter egg and she was disappointed when Mum wrapped the egg in the torn
foil and put it on the top shelf of the dresser, well out of Joel’s
reach. Hopefully, Mum was keeping it to share with the others, so she’d
have to wait until then. First of all, Chris and Amy came home from the
library, then Grandma and Grandpa arrived home from visiting the
Harrisons, but still that lovely egg stayed on the shelf. Carla was
surprised that nobody else noticed it, because she couldn’t keep her
eyes off it. At last, Dad came home and Carla waited eagerly, but
nothing happened.
“Mum, may we please have some of the Easter egg now?” Carla asked, but
Mum shook her head and replied, “No, Carla, we’re not going to eat that
egg. It’s going to stay on the shelf to remind us what’s really
important about Easter.”
The children listened as Mum told them what happened in the supermarket.
They already knew that the most important thing about Easter was that
Jesus died on the cross and then God made Him alive again, that this was
how God had given the very special gift of eternal life to His people.
They wondered what they could say to persuade their mother to change her
mind, but they knew that wasn’t likely to happen either.
“But Mum, the paper’s all torn. Won’t it get ants in it?” Amy asked
hopefully.
“I don’t care! We’re not going to eat it!” Mum replied. “It can stay there to remind us how easily and how often we are tempted to do wrong things and how much we need Jesus to be our Saviour!”
“Isn’t Joel too little to know that it’s wrong to take something?” Chris asked, but that didn’t make any difference either.
“He’s two now and I’m sure he already knows that some of the things he
does are wrong, He’ll learn, just the same as you did. We have to show
him, by what we say and what we do, what is right and what is wrong...
and I don’t want to hear another word about that egg. It’s staying right
where it is!” Mum told them firmly.
Whenever Carla went into the kitchen, she looked at the egg and although
she tried hard to think about Jesus, all she could think about was how
nice it would taste. On Saturday afternoon, she just couldn’t resist the
temptation to have a closer look at the egg. She looked out the window
and saw Mum and Grandma busily gardening, while Amy gave Joel a swing.
She knew that Dad had gone to watch Chris playing basketball and Grandpa
was having his afternoon rest. She tiptoed along the hall until she
could hear Grandpa snoring, then she tiptoed back to the kitchen. She
took another quick look out the window then dragged a chair over to the
dresser, so she could climb up and reach for the egg.
Just as Carla touched it, the egg toppled over but she caught it before
it fell... and as she caught it, she felt the chocolate break. She
peeled back the coloured foil and saw that a nice big piece of chocolate
had broken off the bottom. She put it quickly into her mouth and ate it.
Then she realised that she had disobeyed Mum and she knew how
disappointed Mum would be if she knew. For a moment she panicked, then
she had an idea. Carefully she wrapped the foil around it again, then
put the egg back on the shelf, with the broken part facing the back of
the dresser. It looked just as it had before! Nobody would ever guess
that she had eaten some of it.
The next day, Carla ate a bit more of the chocolate, putting it back
carefully, the same as she had done before and once again, nobody
noticed. The day after that, the same thing happened, but now it was
harder to make the paper stay in place, because a lot of the chocolate
had gone. Carla was sure she hadn’t eaten so much, only one piece each
day, but most of the chocolate had vanished. Maybe the ants had eaten it
after all... but she didn’t think Mum would believe that the ants had
taken so much of the chocolate and she knew she would be in big trouble,
once Mum discovered the almost empty wrapper. Carla didn’t sleep very
well that night because she kept thinking what Mum would say.
When the children came home from school the next day, Mum met them with
the foil wrapper in her hand. She asked them if they knew what had
happened to the chocolate and Carla burst into tears. “I ate it,” she
sobbed, “but I didn’t eat it all, I know I didn’t!”
“Maybe the ants ate it,” Amy suggested, but Mum gave her such a stern look that Amy blushed and looked away. As Carla wept, Mum noticed that Amy’s cheeks were still a very bright pink, so she said, “Do you know something about this, Amy?” Amy blushed even more and nodded her head.
“I took some too, Mum. I know I shouldn’t have done it, but I wanted that chocolate so much! I tried to think about Jesus, but all I could think about was the chocolate.”
At first, Chris felt rather relieved that he hadn’t been involved, but
then he remembered that he had also been tempted to take some of the
chocolate. He also knew that the only reason he didn’t was because there
was always someone else in the kitchen, when he came in. He realised
that he would have been just as guilty if he’d had the opportunity.
Later, when Dad came home, both the girls were still crying and Mum was
looking very upset. Together the girls told Dad how they had disobeyed
Mum and how sorry they were. It was then that Chris admitted that he
probably would have taken some of the chocolate, if he’d had the
opportunity.
“That chocolate egg has caused us a lot of misery,” Dad said and the girls knew exactly what he meant. Even though they enjoyed eating the egg, it had made them very miserable as well. Mum nodded as she remembered how upset she had been at the supermarket.
“Before I paid for that egg I was very tempted to sneak it back onto the shelf and pretend I didn’t know anything about it. I think the only reason I resisted the temptation was because so many people had seen what happened... and that’s not something to be proud about.”
“Satan knows very well how to tempt us, doesn’t he?” Dad said. “Sometimes it’s easier to resist temptation than others, but we often do just what Satan wants us to do.”
“And look how often we forget to ask Jesus to help us when we’re
tempted!” Mum added.
“This should really remind us how much God loves us. He gave His Son to
die on the cross, so that we could come to Him and confess all the wrong
things we do... and He forgives us freely when we’re truly sorry for
what we’ve done.” Dad commented.
“What we really need to do, from now on, is pray every day that God will help us to know when Satan is tempting us to do the wrong thing,” Mum suggested.
“And we must always remember that we should ask Jesus to help us to
resist temptation,” Chris reminded them and the girls nodded in
agreement.
SOMETHING TO DO.
-
Make yourself some posters and put them around the house, to remind you to ask Jesus to help you when you are tempted.
-
When you are really tempted to do something, ask yourself What Would Jesus Do in such a situation? You’ll discover that you know the answer anyway.
-
Use WWJD bookmarks and some stickers for your books and wear a WWJD armband to help you remember. You can make some for yourself if you don’t have any.
Back to top
Back to 2002 Index
Return to Children's Archive Year Selector
All material on this site © 2004 Trowel & Sword