"MOM, that new boy Karl, who has just escaped from Hungary , says he is very rich," Jeffrey told his mother. "He has burns all over his body, and he hasn't got any toys, and they live in an old shack. How can he say that he is so very rich?"
"Why don't you invite him over to play?" Jef-frey's mother replied. "Maybe he is so poor that he has to play make-believe that he is rich." Then she said, "Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. Let us share with them some of our good food. I shall put some food in a basket and you can take it to them."
Karl and his mother were glad to get the basket of food. When Jeffrey asked Karl to come home to play with him his eyes lit up with excitement. "You got big home," Karl answered, "and a nice mother too. I go play with you. Maybe you rich like me?"
"Oh, we're not rich," Jeffrey said with a smile, "but we got it pretty good anyway. I got lots of toys to show you. You can ride on my bike too."
Karl seemed out of place with his clean, but patched-up clothes, as he followed Jeffrey upstairs to Jeffrey's bedroom. Karl did not get excited about Jeffrey's skates, or his gun or the other things that Jeffrey showed him. The Hungarian boy seem-ed most interested in the books: for he picked them up one by one and examined them. Then he laid them down with a disappointed look on his face.
"Would you be willing to be beaten by clubs, or burnt by a red hot poker, be locked up in a jail for days without any food for these things you have shown me?" Karl asked his friend.
Jeffrey was so surprised at such a strange question that he did not know what to say for a minute. Then he began to wonder if the Hungarian boy's mind had been damaged by the things he had suffered in his country. Everybody knew that Karl and his mother had suffered terrible things under the communists before they got away.
"Of course not!" Jeffrey told his friend. "But why do you ask?"
"You have got a lot of nice things," Karl muttered slowly, "but I don't see that you have a Bible. I thought all Americans had a Bible."
Jeffrey laughed a little, and felt suddenly ashamed. "Oh, I've got a Bible," he confessed, "but I forget it half the time at church."
"Don't you read the Bible every day?" Karl asked him in surprise.
"Of course not!" Jeffrey felt a little displeased with his friend for such a question. "The Bible is for Sundays only you see."
"I guess you are a poor boy," Karl exclaimed sadly. When Jeffrey stared at him in surprise he explained. "See all these burnt places on my arms and chest and face?
The communists gave them to me because I had a Bible, and because I would not give it up to them. I hid it away and read it in secret. The reading of the Bible made me very happy, for it told me of Jesus. One day He came into my heart, and made me a rich boy! They beat me, and locked me up without any food, but they could not take Jesus away from me, for He is in my heart!"
"You have a lot of things. You can lose them, or tire of them. I have a Person, and nobody can take Him from me. Every day I learn more about Him as I read my Bible. It is my treasure! But I guess you don't know Him or you'd feel about Him like I do."
Jeffrey hung his head and blushed with shame. He thought a while, and then he smiled as he said; "Now I know why you say that you are a rich boy! I got to thinking the wrong things as being most important. I'm going to read my Bible every day, too, and let Jesus come into my heart. What do you say we start reading the Bible together on Thanksgiving Day, huh?"
Karl smiled and said, "OK!"
"..The judgments of the LORD are true and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold:
sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover by them is thy servant warned:
and in keeping of them there is great reward."
(Psalm 19:9-11)