It was August, hot and sultry. A Christian missionary chose that afternoon—not through a sense of duty, but for the privilege of serving the Lord of glory—to visit a narrow, dingy street in the center of the town.
Holding a Bible and a bundle of tracts in her hand, she knocked at a door in the almost deserted street. Waiting expectantly for someone to answer, she was suddenly startled by a gruff voice behind her saying, "Give me a tract, lady. And I want a gospel one.”
Turning hastily, she found a rough—looking man, his clothes covered with sawdust, pushing a cart which he now rested on the curb behind him. Choosing carefully and with a silent prayer for God's guidance and blessing she handed to him a gospel story entitled, "Saved for Nothing.”
"Will that suit you?" In answer to her question, she was amazed at his burst of eloquence.
“‘Saved for nothing!' Yes, lady, that's it. But there are so many who think they can be saved for something. They are like Naaman who came to the man of God with horses and chariots, with pride in the power and beauty of his homeland, and boasting of the value of the rivers of Damascus as better than the God-appointed waters of Jordan for his cleansing. As his servants said to him: 'If the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it?' There was salvation waiting for him; yes, he could be saved for nothing.”
"But the salvation of poor, lost man has cost God everything," returned the missionary.
"Yes, lady. It cost God His own dear Son. I have not been well" (a statement his appearance fully confirmed), "and was lying down this morning reading Colossians. It says there: 'It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell,' and 'in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.' I just lay back and closed my eyes and said: 'Blessed Lord, and of Thy fullness have all we received.' Look at the crowds that go out after worldly pleasure. To them the blessed Savior of sinners is only `a root out of a dry ground'; but to me—oh, I love that verse in the Song of Solomon!—He is 'altogether lovely.' Altogether, lady—all about Him!”
As she looked into the calm, pale face lighted up with holy joy and felt the clasp of his rough, toil worn hand, the missionary thought: "I have met the happiest man in town—a man not only satisfied himself, but one whose cup overflows.”
And when they meet again in the glory of God, where suffering and toil are forever past, it will be to find that the joy that was filling his heart that August afternoon was but a foretaste of "pleasures for evermore.”
"Marvel not that I said unto
thee, Ye must be born
again.”