You all know what it is to have a birthday, when father and mother and sisters and cousins give you \u00a0presents and perhaps you have a party. It’s not nearly as much fun if you have to share your birthday with a twin, but this is a story about twins, a boy and a girl named Robbie and Rosy. Their family wasn’t \u00a0very well off and they often had to make do with things that their mother and father made for them. It was \u00a0no different this year that we are going to hear about.<\/p>\n
The week before their birthday, Father Ross said to Mother Ross, \u201cThe children will have to go without any birthday presents this year; we just can\u2019t afford any.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mother Ross said, \u201cThey won\u2019t think it\u2019s a\u00a0 birthday without a present\u201d.<\/p>\n
Father Ross shook his head, for there was hardly enough money coming in to get the necessary food \u00a0and clothes.\u00a0 Where \u00a0was money for birthday presents to come from?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have to make the presents,\u201d said Mother Ross.<\/p>\n
\u201cOut of what?\u201d said Father Ross, looking around the tiny two-room farm house where everything of the \u00a0little they had was being used for some \u00a0purpose. But mothers are great inventers, and Mother Ross \u00a0was the best of them all.<\/p>\n
Father laughed..,.what did Mother think she was going to make with that old curtain she had found in a cupboard?<\/p>\n
\u201cRosy won\u2019t thank you for that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But it was no longer a curtain when Mother Ross got through with it. She had made the cutest doll you could see with a round head, and drawn in a face \u00a0and curly hair. A visit to the barn where the oats were stored, and \u00a0Dolly came back looking ever so plump. She now had \u00a0insides, and when she was dressed in other scraps of \u00a0material that Mother had found,\u00a0 there was a doll any little girl might have been glad to have.<\/p>\n
When Father \u00a0Ross saw what Mother had made out of \u00a0nothing much, \u00a0he set his mind to work, and pretty soon, out of a bit of wood, he had made \u00a0a bow and arrow for Robbie with a target board to fire at.<\/p>\n
always sat on a chair at the table beside her. It took days to think up a name good enough, but finally she decided on Rosalie Gwendoline.<\/p>\n
One day a sad thing happened. The twins had a bad quarrel. Robbie called Rosy names; Rosy went and told her mother, and Robbie got a scolding. That didn’t make him feel any more pleasant toward his sister.<\/p>\n
\u201cOld tattletale,\u201d he said to himself, \u201cI\u2019ll make her sorry that she told on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
But how? That was the question. In what way could he get back at Rosy?\u00a0 While he was thinking about it, his eye lit on Rosalie Gwendoline . There she lay on the table; Rosy and his father and mother were out in the garden. It didn’t \u00a0take a minute to stuff the precious doll inside his sweater. Robbie looked like a stuffed pig, but there was no one there to see him.\u00a0Out of the back door he slipped, while Father and Mother and Rosy were busy in the front yard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll show her, the mean tattletale,\u201d he said, as he crossed the yard to back of the barn. When Rosy came hack to the house a little later, the first thing she did was to look for her beloved doll. There were not many places where a doll could hide in a two-room house, so it didn’t take very long to show\u00a0 her that Rosalie Gwendoljne was not there.<\/p>\n
\u201cRobbie, have you hidden your sister\u2019s doll?\u201d Mother asked.<\/p>\n
And Robbie said, \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, a doll couldn\u2019t run off by itself, and you were the only one in the house,\u201d said his father. He looked so cross that Robbie was scared.\u00a0 He said, \u201cThe dog\u00a0was in the house.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the way when you do anything wrong; you have to keep covering it over and over\u2014first one lie, then\u00a0 another. Robbie may have covered himself with his lies, but it didn’t make him feel any better.<\/p>\n
Since no amount of searching produced Rosalie Gwendoline, they agreed that Prince, the dog, must have carried her off in his mouth and\u00a0 perhaps chewed her to pieces outside. Robbie\u2019s conscience smote him, but he tried to smother it, saying to himself, \u201cNo one can possibly find out.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a while he almost forgot about his misdeed, until one Sunday the minister preached on the text, \u201cBe sure your sin will find you out,\u201d and again he felt a prick of conscience, but he reassured himself by thinking, \u201cThe old doll\u2019s deep in the ground; no one will ever find her.\u201d<\/p>\n
How Rosy missed her beloved doll, especially as \u00a0a season of wet\u00a0 weather set in and she couldn’t get out to play. But the sun shone again it always does, no matter how long the rain lasts.\u00a0 Then one day Mr. Adams, who had the next farm to the Ross\u2019, came into the house at dinner time.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, what\u2019s that you\u2019ve been planting behind the barn?\u201d he asked. \u201cYou\u2019ve got it set out the strangest looking way I ever did see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now Mr. and Mrs. Ross knew they hadn’t been planting anything there, and everyone was curious; so they got up from the dinner table and went out behind the barn. Sure enough, there was soft green peeping up from the earth, and it was an odd shape.<\/p>\n
Father and Mother Ross, Mr. Adams, and Rosy all looked at it with curious, puzzled faces, all except for \u00a0Robbie. Oh, his face grew pale, and on it came a look of terror, sheer terror , for there, outlined in the earth in living green, he saw the form of Rosalie Gwendoljne. There was no doubt about it, the head, body, arms, legs, could be seen as plain as could be. He didn’t know his mother had stuffed the doll with \u00a0oats; he didn’t realise that the continued rains had rotted the old\u00a0 curtain that made the body of Rosalie Gwendoline\u2026.all he knew was that in some strange way his sin had found him out and was exposed to all eyes.<\/p>\n
We must remember that God sees and knows everything we do\u2026.it is no use trying to hide anything from God. If we don’t own up now, one day we will have to face God with it still on our conscience, and that will be the most shameful and terrifying\u00a0 moment of our life.<\/p>\n
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You all know what it is to have a birthday, when father and mother and sisters and cousins give you \u00a0presents and perhaps you have a party. It’s not nearly as much fun if you have to share your birthday with a twin, but this is a story about twins, a boy and a girl … Continue reading Be Sure Your Sin Will Find You Out!<\/span>