Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock.
All was quiet in the big country house. Even the grown-ups had all gone to bed. No sound of any kind could be heard anywhere, except the steady tick, tock, tick, tock of the old grandfather clock downstairs.
Eddie sat up in bed and looked around him. I don’t like this quiet, he thought. It feels like there is no one else in the whole world but me.
Suddenly Eddie heard a little different noise downstairs.
What’s that? he wondered.
Tick, tock, then more slowly, tick..........tock, then tick...tick...tick. This was followed by a whirrrrrr, a thud, and then...silence!
For a few moments Eddie did not move a muscle. What had happened? He could feel the silence. That friendly tick tock of the grandfather clock that he had heard his whole life had stopped!
Through the stillness there seemed to come to Eddie another sound—regularly it beat, tick, tick, tick, tick. This held his attention and he strained his ears to listen. Then he became aware of a little thump going on inside of himself, and he put his hand over his chest.
“It’s in my chest!” he said out loud. “It’s my own heart beating, and it sounds just like a clock!” Eddie lay down again and began to think.
Has that grandfather clock got a heart too? I wonder ... it ticks just like mine does, only louder, because it’s bigger than I am. It has ticked for seven years ... Daddy told me ... and now it has stopped. My heart must have ticked for seven years too. Will my heart stop ticking? What will happen if it does? I guess I’ll die. What will happen then?
Quite suddenly Eddie began to think about sin. He knew that he had never asked the Lord Jesus to wash his heart clean from sin and make it white as snow. He knew that sometimes he disobeyed and did things that were wrong. And he also knew that the Lord Jesus had said, “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:3737All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. (John 6:37)). He seemed to hear a still, small voice saying, “Eddie, if you want to know that someday when your heart stops beating you will come to live with Me in heaven, you must come to Me now and confess that you are a sinner. I love you and will forgive you and wash your sins away.”
Without waiting another moment, Eddie got out of bed, and in the quiet stillness of the night, kneeling beside his bed, he accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his very own Saviour.
From that happy moment on, he never doubted that when his heart would stop beating, he would enter heaven, which the Lord Jesus has waiting for all who trust in Him.
What will happen to you when your heart stops beating?
ML-10/12/2014