"A happy New Year to you!" This salutation greets us as we walk down the street on this first day of the New Year. Bright and happy it seems, for the sun, as if desirous of ushering in the New Year becomingly, is shining with even some pretense of warmth.
But our business this morning is not in the broad, sunny street. We turn into a narrow, dark court and reach the door of our destination—the last house in the court where, we have been told, a man is dying. We knock at the door, and it is partly opened by a tall, gaunt, famished-looking woman with a child in her arms. She peers cautiously out at us through the aperture. At last, apparently satisfied with our friendly intent, she opens the door and bids us enter.
We now learn that the husband has been ill with rheumatic fever for nearly four weeks. A child also is in bed upstairs with a fever, and the one she holds in her arms has but lately recovered. "You'll excuse me," says she, "for I am quite weak myself." And she sinks wearily into a chair.
Mounting the creaking stairs we enter the room above and see the husband. There, propped up in bed, sits the object of our visit—a man about forty-five years old. Though the frail form is cushioned with pillows, his brows shadowing feverish eyes are knit with pain. Beside him on the bed lies the child who is "down with the fever.”
"A happy New Year"? What a solemn irony the words would contain if we pronounced them here! Happiness? The poverty; the agony; the quick, short breath; the poor hands with joints knotted out of shape; the clammy sweat upon the sick man's brow! We are full of pity as we gaze upon his distorted hands. He stretches them out as mute witnesses of his suffering, and then thrusts them beneath the covers to keep them warm.
He has not slept much during his long illness, and is about worn out. In fact, last midnight he made sure he was dying, he says.
We sympathize with him in his suffering. Then, looking to the Lord for guidance, we ask him gently how it would have fared with his soul if he had indeed died at twelve o'clock last night.
The sick man turns a quick, searching glance upon us as if no one had ever before questioned him as to his soul's salvation. Then slowly, between the short breaths, comes the answer: "It would have been all right.”
“Then you have," we eagerly reply, "got hold of the Lord Jesus Himself as your Savior?”
"I have," says the sick man; "leastways, He's got hold of me.”
"Thank God for that! How long have you known it—or, rather, Him?”
"Since this morning, sir, shortly after midnight." "Then this is a happy New Year to you?”
"It is indeed, sir." And we praise the Lord together.
Somehow the court does not seem so bad after all as we leave it. Now ringing in our hearts, with a deeper meaning than ever before perhaps, are the words: "A happy New Year! A happy New Year!”
And, dear one, how is it with you? Can you look back to the time when you by grace, as a poor lost sinner, took shelter beneath the blood of Christ? Can you say, "Yes, thank God; it is all right with me"? If not, remember that one thing, and one alone, can meet the claims of a holy and sin-hating God—the precious blood of Jesus.
To Israel, on the day that they took shelter from the destroyer beneath the blood of the Passover Lamb, God declared: "This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you." Ex. 12:22This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you. (Exodus 12:2). That was their happy new year's day.
Happy too are they who know that Christ, their Passover, is slain, and that they, cleansed and sheltered by His blood, can now keep the feast. What a portion is theirs!
Dear one, may such a HAPPY NEW YEAR be yours.