“That’s me!” the man in the hospital bed said loudly.
I started the verse again in Isaiah 53 “All we like sheep have gone astray....”
“That’s me!” he interrupted again.
I put down my Bible and said to the man, “Sir, why do you keep interrupting me? I came in here to read a few verses from the Bible and you keep saying ‘That’s me.’ What are you talking about?”
The patient replied, “You keep reading my name in that book. I didn’t know it was in there.”
“I really don’t think your name is actually in this chapter,” I said to him. “But is your name written in the book that God keeps of all those who are saved?”
“I still say you read my name,” he said without answering my question. “Read it again and you’ll see.”
I again read verse six very slowly: “All-we-like-sheep-have-gone astray....”
“There it is,” he said. “A Stray! My name is Art Stray!”
That was the start of a friendship that lasted for almost two years. Two times a month I visited with him, read to him and pleaded with him to accept the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour. He always had a reason why he couldn’t believe or raised some question about the goodness of God.
During the two years his health continued to fail. Still he would not give in. He refused to believe the end of the verse in which his name was written: “the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”
One day when I again stopped to visit, I found that he had died the week before. Mr. A. Stray had died still astray!
ML-11/09/1980