From childhood I was unsociable, and seldom bothered even to be friendly. Independent and stubborn, I would yield to no one. My father left me to myself, and my chief pleasure after school hours was to ramble alone along the seashore. In high school I learned to deceive my parents in order to get money from them to spend on my pleasures. They soon found this out, and begged me to change my ways.
One day my father asked me, “Who do you think supports you?”
“Nobody,” I replied.
This made him angry, and he said, “If you are not supported by me, why do you not earn your own living?”
So I left home for a few days and sold newspapers for a living. Soon my parents began to worry about me and took me back home. I spent another year at school in the same unhappy state of discontent and discouragement. Then I ran away, this time to Tokyo, without telling my parents. They traced me, and took me home again.
For about a year after this I worked in a drug store at Osaka and saved a little money. But, still discontented, I went to Tokyo again and worked as a laborer in the Honjo District. A man of few words, with no friends or companions, I soon became lonesome.
One night a fellow-worker took me to a bar. There I learned to drink with him, and soon my lonely heart was caught by the devil’s snare. More drinking and more bad friends followed. Soon I became a member of a wild gang. One night after drinking hard, I found myself on the banks of the River Sumida. I listened to the whisperings of the dark stream, and it seemed to say, “Why did you come to Tokyo? To become a drunkard?”
“No, my intention was to study hard,” I answered.
But I could not give up drinking with my new friends and sank lower and lower. Soon my money was gone, and what I collected from my employer was spent too.
That good man guessed what was going on, and called me into his private office. He warned me, “Young man, did you not come here to study and improve yourself? Stop your drinking and be a man!”
I would not listen, but ran away (with his money) to Hakodate, a city in the far north. Here in a cheap hotel I meditated over my past. Why was I born so wicked and degraded? Why was I nothing but a menace to those around me? It would be best to put an end to myself and sin no more. Yes, I decided, death was the only way out.
I wrote to my employer, asking his forgiveness, and then went down to the seashore intending to drown myself. There, gazing at the sunset from a rock on Cape Tachimachi, I said to myself, “Death will end all for me.”
Then I burst into tears, crying, “Oh, my dear loving father and mother, forgive your unworthy son. Oh, my friends, forgive this unworthy wretch!”
Taking off my coat, I murmured, “Yes, I must die,” and plunged into the deep waters of the bay.
I remember nothing more, but God had His eye upon me and I was picked up unconscious by a fishing boat, and rushed to a hospital at Omori. Regaining consciousness in the hospital, I found that it was run by Christians. The patients in the ward were often visited by a preacher who came to read the Bible to them. One day he took as his text the parable of the lost sheep. He read how the sheep had become lost, and how the loving shepherd searched until he found it. That sheep was so much like me—a poor, wandering, unworthy person! I learned that even a sinner such as I could be saved through faith in Christ Jesus and the cleansing power of His atoning blood. I believed God—and it “was counted unto [me] for righteousness” (Romans 4:33For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. (Romans 4:3))!
Now the gloom, which had filled my heart, was gone and I was filled instead with joy and peace. I rejoiced in the love of God that could seek and save even me.
Is there any parallel between my story and the condition of your own heart? If so, the love of the God that saved me can save you too. Will you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ?
“I am poor
and needy; yet
the Lord
thinketh upon
me.”
“If a man have an hundred sheep,
and one of them be gone astray,
doth he not leave
the ninety and nine, and goeth
into the mountains, and seeketh
that which is gone astray?”