One morning, Mr. Elgin and his wife decided to go over to their son’s home and visit their new grandchild. Being a workday, their son wasn’t at home. So after seeing the baby and while his wife and daughter-in-law visited, Mr. Elgin decided to play fetch with their dog in the backyard.
He found a stick and he and the dog started the game. They had been playing for a while when . . . oops! The stick went a little too far, and it looked as though it landed on the roof. Mr. Elgin decided it might be a good idea to get a ladder and go up on the roof to find the stick. He didn’t want to just leave it up there.
All he could find was a step ladder, so Mr. Elgin set it up against the house. He saw it was about one step short of reaching the roof. He climbed to the top and decided he could trust the tread on his new rubber-soled shoes to take that final step onto the roof.
Safely on the roof, he looked all around, but there was no stick to be found! So the next thing was to get off the roof, but that might be a tricky matter! He had noticed that his new shoes were not gripping the roof very well. When he found himself slipping, he realized that his son had recently oiled the cedar shake shingles on the roof ! How he wished now that he had not taken that one step from the top of the ladder onto the roof !
Realizing how easily he could slip off the roof, his thoughts quickly turned to two people he loved who had fallen off a roof. One was killed and the other one was seriously injured with many broken bones.
Mr. Elgin certainly was in a dangerous situation. How easy it had been for him to take that step onto the roof. He didn’t expect any problems as he walked around up there. And young people see things they would like to do and usually don’t expect any problems either. They know it might be a little risky, but they want to try it anyway. They are sure they can just walk away if it becomes dangerous. Satan’s trap! Satan whispers, Try it; you’ll like it. How well he knows that sin can be fun, and who’s going to walk away from fun? And so that first step leads to another, and then another toward that slippery slope of disaster.
Mr. Elgin was on that slippery slope and decided to sit down on the roof, but he still kept sliding towards the edge. He pounded on the roof and called to his wife. But since he was on the garage roof, she never heard him.
About then, the next door neighbor drove into his driveway and waved a friendly hello. Mr. Elgin waved back, and then the neighbor disappeared. No help from him, he thought. Then he remembered the Bible verse: “Call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me” (Psalm 50:15). So right then and there he prayed, “Help me, Lord Jesus.” Then he had a thought . . . If he could carefully slide over to the corner of the roof where he saw a vent pipe, he could at least hang on to the pipe until help came. So that’s what he did — very carefully — and he was thankful to find that the seat of his pants wasn’t as slippery on the shingles as his shoes were.
Not long after this, that same neighbor was in his yard and saw Mr. Elgin still sitting on the roof, hanging on to that pipe. “Do you need some help?” the neighbor called.
“Do I ever!” Mr. Elgin called back.
The neighbor brought over a long ladder and put it up against the house and helped Mr. Elgin get safely down to the ground. “You are a godsend!” he told the helpful neighbor. As he walked around to the front of the house, he thanked the Lord for answering his prayer by sending the neighbor and saving him from a terrible fall. And as he came around the front, he discovered something. There in the front flower bed he saw the stick! That one step had not been necessary at all; in fact, it had almost cost him a dangerous fall and possibly his life.
Young person or older one, are you being tempted to take that first risky step into what looks like fun that’s too good to miss? Turn around now before it’s too late, and direct that step to the Lord Jesus who loves you and offers you forgiveness for your sins and far more wonderful happiness than this evil world knows anything about. Come to Jesus right now, confessing that you are a sinner and that you need His forgiveness. He will not only forgive your sins, He will give you much, much more, including a home in heaven with Him when your life on earth is over.
Only a step to Jesus!
Then why not take it now?
Come, and, thy sins confessing,
To Him thy Saviour bow.
Only a step, only a step;
Come, He waits for thee!
“Now unto Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy” (Jude 24). “In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” (Ephesians 1:7).
ML-11/17/2002