It is noon in a little town in southern India. The summer sun shines fiercely on the burning hot streets; the place looks dreary and deserted—the very street dogs look too exhausted to move. The natives are taking their noonday rest, and the town is hushed as at midnight. But see, from the doorway of yonder house, a Mussulman bearing a lamb in his arms! His face is anxious and careworn, and he evidently wants to be alone on his errand, which surely is a strange one. Strange enough and sad too; for within that doorway his only boy lies sick. Fever has wasted the lad to a shadow, and he lies there, tossing in pain with parched lips and burning brow. It seems as if the struggle must soon be over. The father’s heart sinks as he thinks of his boy and he resolves to make the last effort to restore him to health.
Passing down the street almost unobserved, he at last reaches a desolate house. The father is alone. Taking off his shoes to show his reverence for the one to whom he desires to appeal, he takes and slays the lamb. As its warm life-blood sinks into the thirsty earth, he kneels and, raising his hands to heaven, he cries from the depths of a father’s heart, “Allah! take the life of the lamb, and spare the life of my child!”
Again and again the pitiful cry rises through the sultry air until the last struggles of the victim are over and the lamb lies lifeless. In completion of the strange act handed down from generion to generation by tradition, the father strips the flesh from the body of the lamb to distribute amongst the religious beggars who live by the alms of the faithful; then he buries the skelekon of the lamb without breaking a bone.
I’m sure you have never seen so strange an act, and you know that the death of that little lamb could not save the boy’s life. But there is a lesson in it for you and me. It may be that you are well and strong, but God says you have a fatal disease. He says,
Is there a remedy for sin? Must we go on and reap its awful wages? How blessed to know that God’s beloved Son is the true Lamb of God, and HE CAN SAVE YOU.
Yes, the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s spotless Lamb has come down into this world and died on the cross that you and I might be cleansed from all our sins in His most precious blood.
ML 06/06/1954