In a small village in Egypt lived a little Mohammedan girl named Fatimah. She was ill, and her relatives tried to make her better by giving her all kinds of horrible medicines. Fatimah had heard of the mission hospital in a town not far away and that the lady doctor there was both kind and skillful. She asked her father’s permission to go to the hospital, but at first he refused. At last he said she could go, but she must not listen to anything out of the Book called the Bible.
Fatimah set off to the town in search of the hospital, fearful because of the horrible things that had been told her by her friends. The nurse had difficulty in persuading the little girl to enter the hospital which seemed far too airy and clean. The thing she was afraid of most was the bed; at home she just slept on a mat on the floor. At first she walked around the bed full of suspicion, thinking it was a kind of trap. But the nurse calmed her fears, and soon she found it was a very comfortable trap.
Experiencing such kindness and comfort, Fatimah was almost dumb with amazement. She told the nurse that at home no one cared whether she lived or died. “And now,” she said, “I come into the hands of Christians, whom my people hate, and for the first time in my life, I am being treated kindly and lovingly. What does it mean?”
The nurse told her that behind it all was the love of Christ. “What’s that?” she asked. The nurse told her the “old old story of Jesus and His love.”
When the Bible woman came around to give the daily gospel message, remembering her father’s words, Fatimah buried her head beneath the blankets, determined not to listen. But the Bible woman’s voice was so powerful that she heard everything, and soon she was sitting up, eagerly drinking it all in. A day or two later she asked the nurse, “Was what I heard just a fairy tale, or is it really true that there is a Saviour even for us Egyptian women and girls?”
The nurse was glad to be able to tell her that it was really true, and that she herself knew Him as her own Saviour and Friend. Fatimah said that if that were so, she wanted Him to be her Saviour too. Then believing that He had taken her place in death, and borne her judgment, she just opened her heart to Jesus and accepted Him as her Saviour and Lord. A great joy swept through her soul and soon she was telling the other women and patients in the ward of her great experience. During her three weeks at the hospital, she was a real blessing to many. She changed her name, and they called her Lydia.
She wanted to stay and become a nurse, but her family made serious trouble. So she went back to her people, a new creature in Christ Jesus-bright, intelligent, and full of life, radiant and triumphant.
Because she had become a Christian, they received her with bitterness and scorn. They locked her up, half starved her, and beat her. But the worst thing of all to her was that they burned her Bible. Only a page was saved, and this she hid in a hole in the mattress and read it daily, praying that God would keep her true to her Saviour.
The page contained the 27th Psalm: “The Lord is my light and my salvation: whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?... When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.”
So day by day she quietly and patiently bore her sufferings. All the while the Lord was working in the hearts of her mother, her sister and her brother, and the time came when she won them too for Christ. Lydia and her sister both became fully-trained nurses, and visitors to the hospital found them telling joyfully that there is a wonderful Saviour for all who will put their trust in Him.
ML-12/04/1977