“I would give anything, or suffer anything, if I could only be as happy as I once was,” were the words of a woman of about thirty-five years, who was lying in a ward in L.
A neglected cold, and much want and trouble, had led to rapid consumption, and, when she was brought into the infirmary, it was clear that she had not many weeks to live.
Years before, an evangelist came to O., where this woman, then a girl, was living, and she, with many others, was converted, and her heart filled with joy. Time passed, and she wandered away from the Lord, until at last she had to say,
“I did once know the Lord, but not now.”
However, the Good Shepherd had followed His wandering sheep, and was even then about to bring her back. He spoke to her in various ways, and at last she listened and longed to return.
She was assured of the welcome that awaited her if she would but come, and urged to do so.
“If any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father.” He begins His work when we sin, not when we repent or return to God, and that leads us to repentance. It was not long before the sick woman was to prove the truth of it for herself. A week later, on reading the latter part of Luke 15, the remark was made,
“That is just the welcome that awaits every one that returns to the Father.”
“Yes,” she said, “it is just the welcome I received when I came back.” After that she was full of joy.
She grew rapidly worse. Once, when speaking of her little boy, she said,
“My sister will take him. She will bring him up better than I could have done, but” (after a pause) “if I lived now I should want to live for Christ, and Christ only.”
Alas! the time had gone by, and yet God in His grace gave her an opportunity of testimony for Him in that ward at the very end. Both the nurses and the other sufferers noticed her patience and her trust, and were impressed by it.
One evening she had a very bad attack of difficulty in breathing, and she said to the sister of the ward, who was standing by her bedside,
“Is this the end?”
“I am afraid it is,” was the answer.
“O, I am glad; I am glad!” and with two or three words, telling of her confidence, she passed away to be with the Lord.
A week or two before her death, she sent a message to her Christian father, that his prayers for her were answered, “and tell him I am so happy.”
This little account is written with the hope that it may encourage some other who has wandered far away, and who longs for the joy now fled, to return without delay, and thus experience the same “welcome.”
And let us each one remember that now is the time to “live for Christ.” By and by the opportunity will be past, and it will be too late.
“The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: and that He died for all, that they which live, should not henceforth love unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them, and rose again.” 2 Cor. 5:14, 1514For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: 15And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. (2 Corinthians 5:14‑15).