God’s Great Love

“THE doctor says I have only three weeks to live, and that is far too short a time to do what those good men tell me is needful!” So said a tall, pale, and wasted looking young lady of about twenty summers. What did she mean?
Her visitor had asked as to her health, and she had frankly told him the doctor’s opinion. Let us hear their conversation, as nearly as I can recollect it.
“Then I suppose you will be thinking a great deal of where you are going after death?”
“Oh! no! on the contrary, I try to banish this from my mind. I have lived a gay life. I have gone in for the pleasures of the world in all their many forms, and its no use my thinking of anything else now. Besides, no less than five clergymen have called to see me, and one and all of them have told me that I must make myself good in order to fit myself for heaven; and I can’t do that. Indeed, I have no inclination to try, and in any case I have only three weeks to live, and that is far too short a time to do what those good men tell me is needful to fit me for heaven; so what is the use of making myself unhappy with the thought of it now?”
“My dear young lady, I have only fifteen minutes to be with you, as I have to catch a train for—; but I have to tell you that in fifteen minutes you can be made fit for the presence of God. Why do you laugh?”
“Pardon me, I did not mean to be disrespectful, but I could not help laughing at the idea of me being fit for God’s presence here and now in fifteen minutes!”
“Well, here in this old Book, the Bible, I will show you what God says. In Ephesians 2:4-5, we read: ‘But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ (by grace ye are saved).’ Now look at it; is not that your state— ‘dead in sins’?” “Yes, indeed, it is, exactly.”
“Well, you see these words— ‘For his great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sins.’ You say that is you. Well, don’t you see that God loves you just as you are? It is true you cannot make yourself good—not in thirty years, much less in three weeks; but God meets you with His great love just where you are.”
Ah, under the cover of seeming indifference there lies many an aching, yearning heart; and this young lady, so apparently careless as to eternal things, burst into tears.
“Oh, why did the others not tell me this?” she exclaimed. “Only to think of God loving me!”
After a few more words as to the gospel of God’s free, sovereign love, her visitor had to leave for the station; but, returning to that town a few days after, he called again. This time she was in bed, but her face lit up with a glad smile as she welcomed him.
“Oh,” she said, “since you were here I have been able to think of nothing else than God’s great love, but I cannot find the verse you read to me. Will you please show it to me, so that I may read it again?”
Two of her young lady friends called at this moment, and began to tell her of some of the amusements they had been at; but she soon silenced them by telling them of her conversion to God, and how repulsive to her now were these worldly things which had so long wasted her life. Then, turning to them, she so earnestly pleaded with them as to their souls, that they fled from the room without even saying good-bye.
She lived for three months (how often has the joy of the Lord sustained the life of the body!), testifying to all who came near her of the love of God, and pressing it on their earnest attention. Her room was a Bethel, and it was a pleasure to be beside her.
Reader, have you believed the great love of God? Calvary is the witness to it. The voice of Jesus tells louder than the voice of the archangel that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
L. W. L.