She backed down the hall into a little dining room and the children came and gathered around her. One little girl said, “Mamma, is daddy dead?” And then they all sobbed with the mother who replied, “Yes, they’ve killed him.” I couldn’t do a thing but weep with them. After a while the woman looked up and said, “Preacher, do you think God Almighty knows about all this? Does God,care?” , You may think that was a strange way for a Christian to speak; But, friends, have not our hearts, too, been wrung at times with that cry of an guish on dark nights and in bitter experiences through which we have paSsed? As I stood there almost dumb in the presence of such grief, I re membered that Jesus, our precious Saviour, passed through a night of great sorrow and that He cried out in anguish, /“My God, my God, why?” I am so glad that Jesus went through that experience, because I could then say to the little Scotch woman, “Yes, He knows. Don’t you remember in that dark hour when He was hang ing on the cross He said, ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ ” I have spent nearly all of my life among poor people. I have been go ing to deathbeds and homes of sor row and trying to say something that would comfort wounded hearts. I think I would have committed sui cide halfway back on the journey if I had not believed in the old Book. My baby son, my eighth son, was taken to the hospital one morning. I went there to see him and they put a white robe on me, for he was ill with diphtheria. When I went into the room the little fellow looked at me and said, “Daddy, why do you dress like, that when you come here?” I said, “Donnie, it is because the doctors .and the nurses do, and they won’t let me come in unless I put this robe on.” He said, “Daddy, am I going to die?” j His little feet were in the cold wa ters even then. They were slipping over the brink. I asked him, “Are you afraid to die?” And do you know what my little lamb said? “No, daddy, I’m not afraid to die. Jesus is with me.” God pity you, you school teacher, you professor, if you dare to steal that faith away from my child! “Jesus is with me.” That was the testimony of my baby. He could say with Da vid, “I will fear no evil, for thou art with -me.” Christ Himself meets every saint as he comes to the river’s brink, and He carries him safely over. “Precious in the sight of the Lord is th death of his saints.” END. 11
my feet. He met all life’s trials, and it helps me so to know that He knows and He cares. He is One With us in Death He is one with us in death. It is a very solemn fact that every one of us in just .a little while, some of us in a very little while, will come to a grave (unless the Lord appears in glory and takes us home by way of translation). Like those who have gone before us, we will stop at that grave. It is a solemn thought. But listen. He took part of our flesh “that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil.” Blessed be God! “And deliver them who through the fear of death were all their lifetime sub ject to bondage.” In the hour of be reavement Jesus is one with us. He spake of Lazarus, “his friend.” I some times think the world came nearer to understanding Him at that point than at any other. When He healed the leper He said, “This is the power of the most high God.” ' When He calmed the sea the people asked, “What manner of man is this that even the winds and the waves obey him?” But when He stood beside the grave and let His tears fall they said, “Behold, how he loved him.” Oh, yes, He knows all about it. He knows the anguish of heart that comes when we stand and look for the last time on the face of our beloved dead. During the first World War I had to go from time to time to the homes of a number of my parishioners and tell them that a son had been slain, or a father or a husband had died in battle. One morning early I had a phone call. A husband and father had been slain in battle. I knew that home. There was a little Scotch wife in it, with four or five baimies, and she was a good Christian woman. All the way to her home I kept asking God to give me some word to say to her. When she opened the door she looked suspicious at once. She said, “Preacher, why so early? ?. Is my hus band dead?” I said, “Yes, he’s dead.”
But lo, when I received His Son, I received the spirit of sonship too, and that spirit cried, “Abba, Father.” It is a great thing to be bom of Him “who saves and they who are saved are all of one [may I add the word spirit?^, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren.” It was a marvelous thing when I called Him my Saviour. But it was a bigger and greater thing when it dawned upon me that He would call me brother. What an honor to trust Him, to follow Him, and believe I am go ing to be with Him in eternity! But to think that He owns me, with all my weaknesses and all my faults and failures, and is not ashamed to call me His brother! It seems too good to be true. But it is written in God’s Word, and I believe it. He is One With us in Everyday Experience He is one with us in the common experiences of our everyday life. Oh, that helps me so! “He was made per fect through suffering.” Because He “hath suffered being tempted, he -is able to succour them that are tempt ed.” He knew what it was to be hun gry. He knew what it was to be slandered. He knew how it felt to be blasphemed. He knew poverty. “He was rich, but for your sakes he became poor.” The foxes had holes and the birds of the air had nests, but “the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” He knew what it was to be weary. He knew what it meant to have the people call Him a devil. He was “despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquaint ed with grief.” Oh, my sister, my brother, if you are passing through trouble of any kind, remember that you have standing in the presence of God a great High Priest making in tercession for you, who can “be touched with the feeling of our in firmities.” “He was tempted in all points like as we are, sin apart.” Isn’t that sweet and lovely? I’m glad He was a man. He went down the road over which I am walking. He stepped on the thorns that pierce
Yonr Prayer Request
111 of us have needs. And there is no need, no situation, no prob- il lem that God cannot deal with. He is able and He is willing. This we know on the absolute authority of His Word. Each morn ing the editorial staff of the King’s Business magazine gathers for prayer. Over the years God has answered the heart-cry of thou sands. Should you have a request we would count it a privilege to take it to the throne of grace. Your request will be held in the strictest confidence. Address: The Editors, King’s Business maga zine, 558 So.. Hope St., Los Angeles 17, Calif.
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