A. B. Simpson said:  “Beloved, have you the marks of the Lord Jesus?  These sacrifices to which He sometimes calls us are just great investments that He is asking us to make and that He will refund to us with accumulated interest in the age to come.”

He then told the following story about good Richard Cecil*:

“Good Richard Cecil once asked his little daughter, as she sat upon his knee with a cluster of pretty glass beads around her neck, if she loved him enough to take those beads and fling them into the fire.  She looked in his face with wonder and grief; she could hardly believe that he meant such sacrifice.  But his steady gaze convinced her that he was in earnest; and with trembling, reluctant steps she tottered to the grate, and clinging to them with reluctant fingers, at last dropped them into the fire, and then flinging herself into his arms, she sobbed herself to stillness in the bewilderment and perplexity of her renunciation.

He let her learn her lesson fully, but a few days later, on her birthday, she found upon her dressing case a little package, and on opening it she found inside a cluster of real pearls strung upon a necklace and bearing her name with her father’s love.  She had scarcely time to grasp the beautiful present as she flew to his presence and throwing herself in his arms, she said, ‘Oh, Papa, I am so sorry that I did not understand.’”

A. B. Simpson then said, “Some day, beloved, in His arms, you will understand.  He does not always explain it now.”

*Richard Cecil (1748-1810) was a leading Evangelical Anglican clergyman of the 18th and 19th centuries.  He was a contemporary of William Wilberforce and John Newton.