LOVE:
POWER OF; GRACE

There was a woman named Bluebird, who lived in Mulberry Bend in the Bowery in New York City a generation ago. She was a woman whose very life was given to the devil. She used dope; she drank; she used tobacco; she lived every way that Paul says we’ll not even talk about. She was that kind of woman—a base, evil woman, and she was in jail. A Salvation Army woman went and stood outside and told her she loved her and kept telling her. And Bluebird cursed her and drove her off, but she came back and told her again. And she cursed her some more and drove her off. And she kept coming back. Always this little woman with the funny hat and the little red band around it kept coming back.

Finally, one day Bluebird said, “You say God loves me. You don’t love me.”

And she said, “But I do love you.

Bluebird replied, “You don’t love me; you’re just doing your job. You’re paid to do this—you’re just slumming. If you love me, you’ll kiss me.” She was dirty and her hair was matted.

And the little Salvation Army girl reached through the bars and stuck her little face as far as she could through and grabbed Bluebird and pulled her dirty face up to her and kissed her full on the mouth. And Bluebird fell in a sobbing heap on the stone floor of the prison and wept her soul out—wept her soul back to her girlhood days, back to her innocency and her purity when she went to Sunday school and learned “God is love.”

And there in a dirty heap, sobbing on the floor, she gave her heart to God.

Matthew 25:34–40; 1 John 3:17–19; 1 John 4:7, 8, 16

Success and the Christian, 108, 109.