Train tales

Thomas the Tank Engine has the goods on us. Here is the plot of Good Morning Engines, which I read to my granddaughter.

Thomas and Percy are trying to catch a few winks in the engine shed, but James in the adjacent berth is boasting on and on about a special early morning run he's been assigned to-taking people to town for a royal parade.

Morning comes and Thomas is up promptly to transport passengers on his branch line to the junction where James is to pick them up and take them to town. But when Thomas arrives at the station, James is not there! He had stayed up so late bragging that he has overslept.

"'Oh no!' says Thomas. He waits and waits but sees no sign of James. ... Thinking fast, Thomas calls over to Percy. ... 'If you make half of James' stops, and I make the other half. ...'"

James is an obnoxious vehicle who has lorded his privileges over Thomas and Percy. And now, by his own sin, he has put himself in the position of being disgraced. There is not a person in a thousand who will not sit on the sidelines and privately gloat at his misfortune.

But the author of Good Morning Engines-whether he be Christian or no-knows instinctively that that is not the right way, not the beautiful way. Though he himself may never in his life have risen to the virtue of Thomas, he recognizes it as virtue. He yearns to be treated the way Thomas and Percy treated James, when he himself should be caught in a sin. He yearns to be a man like Thomas and Percy.

"They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts" (Romans 2:15).