With Jesus

Or, Love's Companionship

What would you give to have Jesus with you — with you as He once was with people in the long ago? When reading about Him have you not felt that you were reading of an absent person — one whom you would see in the next life, but not here? If you love a person very dearly you cannot bear to be away from him; you feel that by staying away you wrong the loved one as well as yourself. I do not see how Jesus could love me very much and willingly be absent from me. I do not feel satisfied when told that He sees me; I want to see Him. Reading of Jesus in the Bible makes people hungry to have Him with them, until they get the idea that it is of no use to expect this. It seems foolish to think He cannot be with us, when we can be with one another; or that He does not care to do so, or thinks it is best for us that He should not. The more you consider any such reasons as these, the more foolish you will see them to be. If Jesus were here in the body and you were promised an opportunity of meeting Him, say some day next week, you would hardly think of anything else until then; or if Jesus were to come where you were, you would leave whatever you might be doing, to follow Him anywhere. You would not even ask where He was going; you would hardly care as to that. You would forget about food or sleep, or whether it was night or day. I am sure you would cling to Him in this way, if you felt as even the weakest Christian would feel. Can you imagine how those who were with Jesus when He was here in the body must have loved Him? how being with Him must have made them feel? But why did He leave those who thus clung to Him, and towards whom He showed such tender love?