Lonely Cottage

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  “Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain counties in the south and south-west. If any mark of human occupation is met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the solitary cottage of some shepherd. Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may possibly be standing there now. In spite of its loneliness, however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county-town. Yet that affected it little. Five miles of irregular upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who “conceive and meditate of ple...

The Decision

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A railway worker in charge of a drawbridge took his small son to work with him one day. Immediately after a large ship had passed under the up-raised bridge, the worker started to lower it for a rapidly approaching train. As he set the machinery in motion, he heard a scream of pain, and turned to see that his son had fallen into the huge gears.
In split second, the worker realized he had a choice to make: reverse the gears, free his son and wreck the train; or, allow his son to be crushed so the train could pass in safety. As the train roared over the bridge, drowning out the screams of his son, the passengers on the train waived joyfully at the worker, unaware of the sacrifice he had made for them.

In the same way today, so many people go roaring joyfully through life, waving at God, unaware of the sacrifice He made of His Son.