SOME years ago I rented a house in the North of London, paying the rent quarterly to the landlord, who called regularly for it.
But the day came when my landlord was too ill to come, so I had to call upon him in order to pay the rent. Strict business being attended to we engaged in, general conversation.
The old man was some seventy years of age, and had been a very healthy man all his life, and had never known what it was to be severely ill.
He took to his new experience very badly. With tears running down his cheeks, he exclaimed, “I do not know what I have done that God should punish me like this.”
I, however, put the matter in a new light. I told him how favored he had been with such uninterrupted good health during a long life. How good God was in giving him time to think of that which he had hitherto neglected, even the question of where he was going to spend eternity.
I reminded him that he might have been cut down without a moment’s warning, and ushered into eternity unprepared, nor could he have good ground of complaint if it had been so, seeing he had a long life in which to think of these things.
I pointed out “the kindness and love of God” (Titus 3:4), in thus reminding him by this serious illness of his approaching end and of the “long-suffering of God to usward, not willing that any should perish, but that all [including himself] should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
Thank God, the truth began to dawn upon him, and this way of looking at it began to drive out of his mind the hard, bitter thoughts of God he was cherishing.
Thus he was prepared to listen further, and to meditate on God’s great love in giving His only Son to die for guilty, sinners, and in the end he was led to put his faith in the Lord Jesus as his personal Saviour.
His heart was filled then with God’s goodness in thus pardoning a long life of neglect in receiving him and giving him forgiveness of sins on the ground of the atoning work of Christ. How true it is that “the goodness of God leadeth... to repentance” (Rom. 2:4).
My reader, have you, like my landlord, been receiving and enjoying for long years God’s many daily benefits without any thought of your real state as a sinner in His sight? Remember, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23).
If so, may He in mercy lead you to seriously consider this. “The goodness of God” has been fully expressed in and through the gift and atoning death of His own Son on the cross, and “there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).
Be entreated then to turn to and trust the Saviour, who still says, “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37), lest you should be like one “that being often reproved hardeneth his neck [who] shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy” (Prov. 29:1).
God grant that you may hear His voice in time.
J. ROBERTSON.