MR. RICHARD WEAVER, along with others, was to preach the gospel in a big city. It was his first visit there. They were to speak in the open air and a gentleman who occupied the chair gave the speakers only ten minutes each. However, Mr. Weaver declined to be bound by the ten-minute rule. He preached with great power on the mercy of God and of the love of Christ. Many were convicted of their sins and need of salvation. Some were so overcome that they were carried unconscious into a church nearby.
Among these was a young girl who had left her home nine years before. When she came to, she sat up and her first words were, “Christ for me.”
With a sense of pardon filling her soul she started for home. She begged by day and traveled by night. Barefooted, sorefooted, and weary she toiled on, sustained, as she afterwards told the preacher, by the thought of seeing her mother again.
It was late at night when she arrived at her old home place. A light shone through the window of the little cottage on the hillside. She reached the door and knocked, but there was no answer.
Her old widowed mother lay in bed. She didn’t know what to make of that knocking at so late an hour. The girl trembled outside with cold, and knocked again and again. Still there was no answer. At last she put her hand on the latch and lifted it. To her surprise the door opened at once. The old mother cried out, “Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Mother,” replied the wearied daughter.
Her mother sprang out of bed, turned up the light that she might see her daughter better, and in a moment had clasped her in a warm and loving embrace. Soon the poor prodigal was sitting at a little table on which appeared a warm and refreshing supper. Her mother sat near her, her eyes wet with tears of joy.
By and by the daughter said, “Mother, how is it that the door was not locked tonight?”
“My dear girl,” replied her mother, her heart almost too full for words, “that door has never been locked since you left nine years ago. I thought you would come back home to your mother, and I left it unlocked for you.”
This touching story reminds us of how long God has left open the door of mercy, waiting in patience for prodigals, wandering in the fields of sin, to return home.
How often He waits in vain! But oh what joy fills all heaven when a sinner repents and turns to the Lord!
“Come! the Father’s house stands open,
With its love and light and song;
And returning to that Father
All to you may now belong.
From sin’s distant land of famine,
Toiling ‘neath the midday sun,
To a Father’s house of plenty,
And a Father’s welcome, Come!”
There is now a new and living way into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, for all who will come. (Heb. 10: 19, 20.)
ML-10/14/1962