It was after the World War and food was scarce in Germany. A Christian lady who lived in the city had visited her relatives on the farm. After she had returned home they found she had left behind her small hymn book, commonly used by the German brethren. Before mailing it back to her, her friends made up a food package and enclosed the hymn book in the parcel. She never received the package nor her hymn book.
Then several years later she received a letter from a certain clerk in the post office. He confessed that some years previous he had smelled food in a package going through the mails and succumbed to the temptation to take it home for his hungry family. On opening the package he was surprised to find the little hymn book. He was a stranger to grace and to God, but as he paged through the little hymnal and read some of the precious hymns, the Spirit of God used those hymns to convict him, not only of his sin in stealing the food package, but of many other sins as well. From the sacred lines he learned that grace had wrought for him upon the cross, that there the Lord Jesus had died that his many sins might be forgiven and all put away. Eventually the time came when he trusted the Lord as his Saviour, and the burden of his sins was gone forever. Now he must tell the lady to whom the little book belonged of how grace had wrought in his soul. Her loss was his eternal gain, for the Saviour had claimed another trophy of His redeeming love.
ML-11/05/1978