So said an old lady as she took a farewell look around the spot that had been her second birth place.
I ventured to ask her how she came to lose those twenty years, or if she had got anything instead. So she told me the story.
“I lived quite near,” she said, “so near that I could hear you singing. I sometimes opened my window to hear the hymns. I wondered what sort of people you were—everybody seemed so happy. I was a church member and lived a religious life; yet I could see plainly that you had something I hadn’t got. Led, half by curiosity and half by anxiety, I ventured in one Sunday evening and sat down near the door where I would hardly be seen.
“The preacher spoke of being ‘born again.’ He said that one might be religious and pray, and do the best he could, and yet be outside of heaven at last. I felt that was me, for I never had been ‘born again.’
“The Word of God stripped me of my false religion, and for the first time I came to realize that I was a lost and ruined sinner. Then came the gospel—the story of the brazen serpent, and life in a look to Jesus. I looked and I lived. I felt I could not rest until I told you.”
We praised the Lord together.
ML 08/17/1967