"The doctor says I have only three weeks to live, and that is far too short a time to do what those preachers tell me is needful!" So said a tall, pale and wasted-looking young lady about twenty years of age. What did she mean?
Her visitor had asked as to her health, and she had frankly told him the doctor's opinion. Let us listen to their conversation.
"Then I suppose you will be thinking a great deal of where you are going after death?”
"Oh, no! On the contrary, I try to banish that thought from my mind. I have had a gay life. I have enjoyed the pleasures of the world in every form. It's no use my thinking of anything else now. Besides, no less than five clergymen have been here to see me. Every one of them has told me that I must make myself good in order to be fit for heaven. I can't do that; indeed, I have no inclination to try! in any case I have only three weeks to live, and that is far too short a time to do what these good men tell me is needful to fit me for heaven. So why should I make myself unhappy with the thought of it now?”
"My dear young lady, I have only fifteen minutes before I must catch a train. But I can assure you that in that fifteen minutes you can be made fit for the presence of God. Why do you laugh?”
"Pardon me! I did not mean to be disrespectful; but I could not help laughing at the idea of me—me—being made fit for God's presence here and now in fifteen minutes!”
"Well, here in this old Book, the Bible, I will show you what God says. Listen: 'But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace are ye saved).' Is that not your state—'dead in sins'?”
"Yes, indeed it is, exactly.”
"Then hear God speak: Tor His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins.' You say that is you. Don't you see that God loves you just as you are? It is true you cannot make yourself good—not in thirty years, much less in three weeks. BUT GOD! He meets you with His great love just where you are.”
What power there is in God's holy Word! Under cover of seeming indifference lies many an aching, yearning heart. As the healing balm of God's love reached her heart this young lady, so apparently careless as to eternal things, burst into tears.
"Oh, why did the others not tell me this?" she exclaimed. "Only to think of God loving me!”
After a few more words as to the gospel of God's great sovereign love, her visitor had to leave for the station. On his return to that town a few days later, he called again. This time she was in bed, but her face lit up with a glad smile as she welcomed him.
"Oh," she said, "since you were here I can think of nothing but God's great love. But I cannot find the verse you read to me. Please show it to me, so that I may read it again.”
Reader, have you believed the great love of God? Calvary is God's witness to it.