A Message of Mercy

A man stood looking into the water as a scrap of paper came floating down the stream, tossed from ripple to ripple. “I am just as helpless,” said he to himself, “borne downwards by a tide which I cannot stem, and from which I cannot escape. There is no one to lift me clear of the tide of destruction as I can lift you, poor miserable scrap.”

As he spoke, he caught the paper with a stick and lifted it from the water. He noticed that it was a fragment of a torn-up letter, and one word upon it attracted his attention as being in thorough keeping with his own feelings. The word was “miserable,” and thus the writing read as a whole: “I assure you…I used to be very miserable…and trust Christ Jesus only…Salvation and now…Christ Jesus only Salvation and now joy and peace.”

He read the words over and over. It had been written by someone who had been, like himself, very miserable, but who had been led to trust Jesus Christ as his Saviour, and so had attained to joy and peace.

“Oh that I could find the same,” said this poor young man. “And yet, why should I not? Christ Jesus came to save sinners. I believe if He chose He could lift me out of the stream of evil and ruin, as I have lifted this scrap of paper. I wonder if He would be willing to save me?” And then a verse of a hymn that he had sung in better days came into his mind:

“If I trust Him to receive me,

Will He say me nay?

Not till earth and not till heaven

Pass away.”

“Oh, is it true?” he cried in an agony of earnestness. “Is it true? I believe it is. When He was on earth He received sinners, and invited the heavy-laden to come unto Him, and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever! I do not deserve it, but He will receive me!”

God has many ways of reaching the human heart, and can employ the humblest and meanest of instruments. Let none doubt His willingness to save, for the Lord is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).