While I was but a young schoolboy, I had a most frightening experience. I had seen other boys, my playmates, climb up a high stone wall that held a railway embankment. There they would hang over the edge for a few minutes before dropping to the ground. It was a foolish thing to do, and earned only the plaudits of other foolish boys.
To prove that I could do whatever the others did, I determined to make the climb too. I would make a grand name for myself, also! Without counting the cost, up the wall I went, there being fairly easy toeholds up the side.
When I reached the top, I dropped down on my knees as the others had. Gently I let myself back over the wall, hanging onto the top with my hands. Glancing down, I came to my senses. What a drop that would be!
Scared through and through, I sought how I could save myself; but it was too late. To pull myself up I could not, and to let go was like dropping into death.
Frantic with fear, I hung in mid-air, sure that death was awaiting me at the foot of the wall. Why did I not pray? I could not even call on God, for I did not know Him. In fact, I was so far away from Him that the thought of prayer never entered my mind.
In spite of my ignorance of Him, the God of all wisdom and knowledge took note of me. In His wondrous overruling providence, He undertook on my behalf. A man working nearby had been aware of my foolish endeavor and now saw my helplessness and distress. Like the Good Samaritan in the case of the half-dead man on the road to Jericho, he came where I was. Bending down, he took fast hold of me, lifted me up and set my feet on top of that solid wall. I was saved by one who saw and pitied me, and who stooped down and picked me up.
That is a lesson I could not forget; and God applied it, spiritually, to my case in later years. For a time came in my life when I was overwhelmed with a sense of sin and guilt in the sight of God. How I longed to lead a godly life! But my striving was all in vain. I dared not die in my sins, and nothing I could do gave peace to my soul. In my misery I cried to God; but not until I had proved all my ideas of fitness to be worthless, not until I learned my own utter helplessness, did I find any relief. When I gave up my own efforts for salvation and submitted totally to the saving of the Lord Jesus Christ and the cleansing power of His precious blood, only then did I learn the joy of being "only a sinner saved by grace."
"I would rather be poor and know Jesus,
Than own all the world and be king;
For only those who know Jesus
In heaven His praises shall sing."