The old woman certainly had a very bad reputation, so bad that her neighbors usually spoke of her as “the old witch.” Children were afraid of her and ran at the very sight of her, always passing her house on the far side of the street.
I was new in the neighborhood and felt sorry for anyone who was so alone and so shunned by everyone, so I went over to her house and knocked at the door. I found her ill and in bed, a pitiful creature. Surely, I thought, if looks betray character, she certainly is a witch!
I asked her how she felt and if she expected to get better.
“No,” she replied shortly.
Then I asked, “But if you die, where will you go?”
She stared at me fiercely, like a tiger about to spring, and she screamed out: “I’m going to hell! I’m wicked! I’m going to hell! I’m wicked!”
“But why do you want to go to hell?”
“I don’t want to go, but I’ve got to go,” she screamed again.
“Who can force you to go to hell?”
“The devil,” she said. “I have served him all my life.”
“Did you never hear of God and His Son Jesus Christ, the blessed One who came down from heaven to save poor sinners from going to hell?”
“No.”
“Have you never heard of God?”
“No! I’m wicked!”
“Don’t you know what love is? Did you ever have a child?”
“Yes, I had eight.”
“Don’t they love you?”
“No, they robbed me of all I had.”
“Didn’t your husband love you?”
“No; he turned me out of doors.”
“Don’t you love anyone?”
“No. I’m wicked, I tell you. I hate everybody.”
Finding her heart so hard, I tried another course. I asked her if she would like a few nice things to eat.
“I can’t have them. No one will give anything to me.”
“Oh, yes, I will,” I said. “This very night I will send a good dinner to you.”
Her amazement was equal to her anger before. “Will you, sure?”
“Yes, I will. Now you see that somebody loves you. And I want to tell you that Someone else loves you! He sent me to tell you about His love.”
“Who is that?”
“It is the great God, the King of all the earth. This great King made all things. He made you. This great God has only one Son, whom He loves very much. Yet this great God loved you so very much that He sent His dear Son all the way down from heaven to die for you and for all who, like you, have been committing sins all their lives.”
Then I read John 3 to her and tried to make her understand that the King of glory would not turn away from her.
“But would He listen to a poor old thing like me?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, “He will.”
“But what could I say to Him?”
“Just tell Him what you have told me. Tell Him all your fears and that you know you are wicked.”
She at once looked straight up to the ceiling as if she saw someone there. In desperation she cried out: “Lord, have mercy on a wicked old woman like me! I have been a wicked old woman all my life.” She said this over and over, until she was crying too bitterly to speak.
This she repeated after me till she had it firmly in her mind. I left her then but soon went again and I asked her if she knew who Jesus Christ was.
“He is the dear Son of the great King of the earth and sky,” she answered.
“Has He done anything for you?”
“Oh, He has died for me!”
Wicked, hell-deserving though she knew she was, she had learned of the Saviour’s love to her. She had met “the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:2020I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)). Now the peace of God had entered into her heart, and it soon followed that she loved everyone.
“God so loved the world,
that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in Him
should not perish, but have
everlasting life.”