Article June 7, 1913 Issue

"AS ONE WHOM HIS MOTHER COMFORTETH."

HENRIETTA A. FIELD.

She was a woman no longer young, as we count time, and the soft dark hair had long since been touched with gray. Children and grandchildren had rested within those sheltering arms, and had known her wise and loving care; but now life seemed to her as full of hopeless tangles, petty disappointments, and bitter heartache as ever it had been in the childhood days. There were no great troubles or emergencies, but just the accumulation of common daily worries,—financial problems, uncongenial surroundings, disappointment over cherished plans, a sharp word spoken in the morning that had left a pain all day,—little things, as trifling in themselves as the child's broken playthings and ghostly fears, but all very real just now to the heavy-hearted woman.

There is a knock at the door, and the form of a much loved friend slips in. The first greetings over, the two drop easily into a free interchange of thought and experience. The sorrows of the day are voiced, and between smiles and tears the story ends with the half-apologetic confession, "I believe I am a regular baby today in spite of my gray hairs!" A pair of loving arms are thrown around her, and a sympathetic voice says tenderly, "Oh, dear heart, you need mothering; that is what is troubling you!"

Then they talk long and earnestly of that tender, infinite Love which broods and comforts its own, clothing the lilies, marking even the sparrow's fall, crowning all the days with loving-kindness and tender mercies, saying constantly, "Fear not," for "underneath are the everlasting arms," and "even to your old age ... even to hoar hairs will I carry you: ... and will deliver you." Gently the healing words fell on the troubled thought, until at length the face of the listener grew sweet and restful in the hush of the deepening twilight. A great comfort had come to her, a new sense of the motherhood of God, and like a sweet refrain the words sang themselves over and over in her thought, "As one whom his mother comforteth."

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