A British soldier in India was persuaded to attend a Sunday evening service. The Padre told of the need for everyone to be saved. Looking straight at the soldier he said, “The Lord Jesus died on the cross for you. Won’t you ask Him to forgive your sins?”
That night the soldier became a Christian.
The first thing he did was to buy a Bible. He put his name and the date and place where he trusted the Lord Jesus on the fly leaf.
Ten years later, a lady in Yorkshire bought a Bible from a second-hand book stall. She was interested to see that it had been in India.
A few more years went by. One summer evening after the lady’s husband had been preaching in the market place, a shabbily dressed man stepped from the crowd and spoke to him. He told how that years before when he was in India, he had become a Christian. For a time all was well; then he stopped bothering to read his Bible. He then stopped bothering to pray, and his bad companions drew him back to evil ways.
When he returned to England, he left the Army but could find no work. He needed money and sold many of his possessions. The preacher’s words had reminded him of those days.
As it was getting late, the preacher asked the man to his home for supper. There, after another talk, he knelt and asked the Lord to forgive him for the years of forgetting Him, and once again committed his life to Him.
“I have not got a Bible,” he said. “I wish that I had that one I sold when I came back to England.”
The preacher’s little girl was listening. Quickly she brought from the bookcase the Bible, bought by her mother years before. “Could this be the one?” she asked.
With tears in his eyes the man took the Bible in his hands. “Yes, that was my Bible,” he said quietly.
“Then it is yours once again,” said the preacher. “Take it and treasure it.”
How wonderfully the Lord Jesus cares for His children even when they turn away from Him and forget Him. He even brought this man’s Bible back to him after many years. E.M.
ML-10/14/1979