Praying For Tea.
On a top floor in a street of tenements lives a colored woman one
hundred and ten years old! Her son, a man over seventy, lost his wife, a
neat, active Christian woman, very suddenly, and his aged mother was
plunged in despairing grief. "Why, why was I left, old and rheumatic and
useless, and Mary, a smart, busy, capable woman taken away without a
minute's warning?" was her continual cry. But the son was left desolate,
and the two rooms were to be kept clean, the meals provided before he
left for his work in the morning, and after his work at night; there was
no one else to do it, and love for him called out new effort. With cane
in one hand she treads the rooms back and forth, performing the
household duties. Eyes undimmed, faculties unimpaired, she _does what
she can_. Upon receiving a call a few months after the death of her
daughter-in-law, she said--"You've brought me a whole pound of that nice
tea! Well, honey, _I asked the Lord for some good tea last night, and I
knowed well enough it would be along some time to-day, cos He never
keeps me waiting long_. I found out why he took Mary instead of me; old
as I was, I wasn't half so fit to go, and he was so full of mercy he let
me stay long enough to see it! You know, honey, I've got no one to talk
over old times with. There ain't none of 'em left that I was young with,
and not many I was old with; but I'm never lonesome, for I'm too busy
thinking of all the Lord's watching and waiting for me. I'm dreadful
little use, but my son couldn't get along very well without me, and then
I tell you I'm so busy thinking, I ain't got any time to be lazy or
lonesome. Good many little things we want, too, and I have to be runnin'
to the Lord for 'em."
"Do they come every time, auntie?", "Every single time, honey! He never
fails, no matter who else does. He knows I don't ask for no nonsense;
only for the things we really need, and he has promised them all the
time." "But, are there not times, auntie, for instance, when your son is
sick, when you cannot see where rent and food is coming from?" "Don't
want to see, honey! What's the use seein'? Believin's the thing!
Believin's better than money." And so, all the revolving months, this
relic of the last century walks by faith in the unseen.