EXCITEMENT stirred the neighborhood children of Wilson, Connecticut, as they rushed home to prepare for the total eclipse of the sun on August 30, 1932.
“It’s going to get dark this noon!” shouted one. “The moon is going to pass in front of the sun!” cried another. A motherless boy of eight rushed with his cousin into the house of a Christian aunt to get a dark lens or blackened glass for the great event.
Aunt Theresa was in the cellar canning vegetables when the boys came in asking for help. Her efforts to blacken an old pair of eyeglasses over the gas stove proved futile. The celluloid rims caught fire and the lenses dropped into the stove. As she looked about the cellar for an old metal-rimmed pair, she turned to the anxious boy. “Francis,” she said, “If you should never see God’s sunlight again, where will your soul be?”
The poor boy’s head dropped. His heart sank with a deep sense of guilt and fear at the thought of the “blackness of darkness forever.” He had often been told of his sin and his need of the Saviour, and at times he had longed to be saved. But now it was pressing; now it was vital. In a short while it was going to get dark, and for all that he knew it would be darkness for him forever. If he did not accept the Saviour God has provided, God would be just in sending him to hell. Francis was the only one of the group of four children who had not professed faith in Christ, although he had traveled with them to Sunday school and gospel meetings from the time he first could remember. The fear of the darkness of hell was as real as the eclipse about to take place. With bowed head and anxious heart he listened as once again his Christian aunt tenderly brought the gospel before him.
We were all born in sin and were all on the broad and crowded way that leads to destruction, said Aunt Theresa. But the Lord Jesus Christ, with arms outstretched graciously invites all: “Enter ye in at the strait gate:... because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Matt. 7:13,1413Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: 14Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. (Matthew 7:13‑14). It is the Lord Jesus Christ alone who is the Way. He said: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no man cometh unto the Father but by Me.” John 14:66Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. (John 14:6).
There’s nothing left to do. He fished it all upon the cross (John 19:3030When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, It is finished: and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. (John 19:30)). Can you not see Him shedding His precious blood and dying there for your sins? Just trust in Him and enter in by believing, for He has said: “I am the door: by Me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.” John 10:99I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. (John 10:9).
With an open heart Francis looked into the faces of his aunt and cousin; then in his small boyish voice he exclaimed, “I believe!”
Near the cross, a trembling soul,
Love and Mercy found me;
There the bright and Morning Star
Shed its beams around me.
Up the cellar stairs went a happy little boy in the sweet enjoyment of the bright rays of the cross. He pondered John 3:1616For 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) now with a special joy, that God could ever love a sinner like him as to give His own Son upon the cross. The eclipse of the sun had come and gone. Francis had missed it all, and yet while others that noon had gazed at the darkened sun, he had got a glimpse of the cross. The same noontide sight, that light above the midday sun that had changed the life of Saul of Tarsus, had wrought a change in young Francis’ heart too. His darkness was gone forever; light, love, joy and peace flooded his soul.
Now, dear reader, will you too put your trust in Him and be brought into the bright and blessed knowledge of sins forgiven?
ML-08/28/1966