A CHRISTIAN man was dying after a long illness. He was tended by his mother-in-law. Near the end, he turned to her and asked: “Mother, are you trusting to Jesus, and ready to go too?” “I am not fit,” was her reply. “Mother, Jesus did not die for fit people, nor for those who can make themselves fit; He died for sinners.” These and other words were the means of leading the mother into the light, and she is now a believer, and ready to go if called.
To those who are approaching the goal like this man, eternity looks very near—earth is fading, and heavenly things assume all the reality God means them to have for us. Do not lightly put aside the words of the dying—you have probably heard many of such.
“When Jacob was a-dying,” he had much to say to his sons; when Joseph was departing, “he gave commandments concerning his bones.” This means more than you perhaps realize. Both had believed God as to the future—surely to them a future for earth—their posterity was to leave Egypt and dwell in Canaan, and neither Jacob nor Joseph wished his bones to be buried out of the land of promise. They believed that Egypt was not always to be the abode of their children, they walked by faith, with their eyes on the future. Their dying words declared this plainly.
Do you believe that this world is not to be our home always? Dying men and women see it plainly for us, and they sometimes seek to warn us, and many of them, we may add, have lived as if they believed it. If we are not to stay here always, will you not prepare for the great change that must surely come?
Would Mr. Chamberlain have started for South Africa without some knowledge of the journey thither? Still more important would he not have deemed it to study the maps of the countries he was visiting, and to have had in his retinue personages who would be useful to him on such an expedition? Surely yes. In like manner had you not better make your preparations if you want an entrance into the heaven we all wish to reach some day?
Yet, wonderful to say, God asks nothing of you, but the acceptance of His preparations and arrangements.
“All the fitness God requireth,
Is to feel your need of Him.”
He is a Saviour “ready to save,” and He waits with outstretched arms, hands too that have been pierced for us, to receive sinners. He is like the father who embraced the prodigal son long before he was “fit,” when he was in rags, and who himself, from his own abundance, prided all the fitness the unworthy son required. When you know His love, His compassion for the lost, for you, you will be able to give “commandment concerning your bones” in peace, for you will be sure of an entrance into the Father’s house, and remember, the long (or short) journey of earth may end at any moment!
When you are in a dark tunnel, directly the light at the exit end becomes visible, you feel you are nearing the terminus, and you forget the darkness or dread. So if you have a sure Light ahead, a Saviour awaiting you, you may be like Jacob and Joseph, “ready to depart,” not wishing to live in Egypt always, but “fit” for heaven now. “Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet (or fit) to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.”
H. L. H.