One evening after a long day at work, I parked my car and walked to the mailbox by the street. Reaching my arm into the mailbox, I found the usual assortment of bills and advertisements. But there was one piece of mail that was not ordinary, and its strangeness caught my attention.
It was a beautiful postcard of blue water lapping onto a curving beach, with a lighthouse set in the distance and the words “IT IS TIME” printed at the top of it. I turned it over to see who it was from — maybe some friend or a relative on a seaside vacation, but the backside of the postcard was pretty much blank, except for some small print that I couldn’t read without glasses. Could it be an important invitation?
I went into the house, found my glasses and read the small print. It was only a reminder of an orthodontist appointment. After momentary disappointment, it dawned on me that I had already received an invitation from the most important person in the universe. And, frankly, it far excels any other invitation a person might receive.
That invitation is found in the Bible, and it invited me to leave sin’s darkness behind and come to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The Lord Jesus said, “I am the light of the world: he that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:1212Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. (John 8:12)). The Bible is like a lighthouse, pouring light into a dark, sin-filled world and showing people the way to truth and life.
How it happened, I don’t know, but the light of God’s grace shone in my soul, and I understood and believed that God loved me. I also understood that through the death of His Son, God did everything that was necessary to blot out my sins that I might be forgiven.
I accepted His gracious invitation to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:3131And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house. (Acts 16:31)). And every day since then, He has invited me to walk in His light and find new discoveries of His grace.
Someday in the not-too-distant future, it will be time to leave this world. Are you ready? Those who believe in Jesus Christ will enter into the joys of heaven. They will live in the heavenly city that has no need of the sun, because the Lord God is the light of the place. Not one person will be a stranger there, and all will live in perfect love and fellowship. How different from our world where there seems to be endless strife!
Being saved, walking with the Lord Jesus, continually finding more of His love and grace, and having the hope of eternity spent in His very presence in heaven — these are some of the things it means to have the light of life.
God wants to bless you with all these rich blessings. IT IS TIME for you, too, to see the light from God’s lighthouse, the Bible, and be saved. Why continue to walk through sin’s darkness another moment, when God invites you to believe in His Son and come into His marvelous light?