A northeasterly wind had been blowing for days. It blew the ice which still lingered on Lake Michigan in March to the Illinois shore. The ice came in chunks about the size of a car, sometimes smaller and sometimes larger, and never in exactly the same shape. It piled up along the beaches and breakwaters creating a lonely, inhospitable landscape. A band of white ice lined the shore for perhaps fifty yards; beyond it the lake stretched for what seemed like forever with a few isolated ice floes dotting the horizon.
Edmund Furo finished up his work at the Resort Lodge at Illinois Beach State Park. Before driving home he decided to walk on the beach. For days he had been watching ice chunks pile up. Every day he had seen the band of ice growing thicker.
On a whim, Edmund stepped from the beach to a piece of the ice. When it didn't move, he felt safe to step to the next one which was wedged against it. He saw that the beach was near at hand, and the ice seemed solid, so he kept going. Edmund figured that, with a little caution, there wasn't any chance of his falling into any of the cracks in the ice.
You may be thinking to yourself that what Edmund was doing, walking on the ice, was foolish and that you would never do anything like that. However, if you don't know the Savior and what it is to have your sins washed away, you really are foolish too; you are walking through life on dangerous footing.
Now, if you are not saved, the ground you are walking on is dangerous because, if you should be called out of this world, it would be forever too late to receive the Lord Jesus as your Savior. Heaven's gate will be barred against you. You will have guaranteed to yourself a lost eternity by your rejection of Christ.
The time to receive Christ is now: "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life!"
Another reason why walking through life without Christ is so dangerous is the treachery of sin. Like the ice Edmund was walking on, sin is slippery treacherous. Edmund never thought he would fall, and if it were possible this moment to go into hell itself and ask those who inhabit it if they ever thought they would have ended up there perhaps all would answer passionately: "No! Never! I never thought I would come here."
Edmund didn't expect to fall either, though as he walked further out he began to see small patches of water — cold, gray water — between the chunks of ice. Suddenly he slipped and fell through a crack in the ice which was barely large enough for his body to slide through. He tried to pull himself out of the hole, but the sides of the crack were too steep. He pulled until his gloves ripped and the flesh on his fingertips tore away, then the undertow dragged him under the ice.
Twice Edmund managed to surface for air before the current pulled him beneath the ice again. About a hundred yards from shore he surfaced next to a chunk of ice whose side he was able to climb up.
He sat there wet and shivering for three hours, not daring to move, before he was spotted by a couple on the beach. They contacted the Coast Guard, who picked him up in a steel basket lowered from a helicopter and covered him with heating pads as they flew him to a hospital.
Edmund was saved. And if you would be saved from your sins and get off once and forever from the treacherous footing all sinners walk on, you must come to Christ. "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out," the Savior said. The blood He shed at the cross means so much to God that when a person believes on the name of Jesus that person is saved for eternity. "The blood of Jesus Christ... cleanseth us from all sin." If sin has been dragging you under, or if you are only now realizing that you are on slippery footing, you need God's salvation offered through Jesus Christ.