The Loving Father. – Dwight Lyman Moody

I remember my little girl had a habit of getting up in the morning very cross. I don’t know whether your children are like that. She used to get up in the morning speaking cross, and made the family very uncomfortable. So I took her aside one morning and s*aid to her, “Emma, if you go on that way I shall have to correct you; I don’t want to do it, but I will have to.” She looked at me for a few moments—I had never spoken to her that way before—and she went away. She behaved herself for a few weeks alLright, but one morning she was as cross as ever, and when she came to me to be kissed before going to school, I wouldn’t do it. Off she went to her mother, and said: “Mamma, Papa refused to kiss me: I cannot go to school because he won’t kiss me.” Her mother came in, but she didn’t say much. She knew the child had been doing wrong. The little one went off, and as she was going down stairs I heard her weeping, and it seemed to me as if that child was dearer to me than ever she had been before. I went to the window and saw her going down the street crying, and as I looked on her I couldn’t repress my tears. That seemed to be the longest day I ever spent in Chicago. Before the closing of the school I was at home, and when she came in her first words were: “Papa, won’t you forgive me?” and I kissed her and she went away singing. It was because I loved her that I punished her. My friends, don’t let Satan make you believe when you have any trouble, that God does not love you.