SOME time ago a Christian was called to the death-bed of a widow. He went immediately, and as he came to the door, he heard a child’s voice inside. As he stood still a moment outside, he understood that it was the widow’s little boy that was praying for his mother. “O, Lord! bless my dear mamma,” prayed the child, “and give her to be ready to die. O, God, I thank Thee, that I have been in the Sunday-school and there learned to read in the Bible. There it is written that if father and mother leave me, Thou wilt never leave me. This is my comfort now, as my dear mamma must leave me. Comfort her also and take her to Thyself in the glory, and let me go there also. O, Lord Jesus! sympathize with me and with my dear mamma and help me to say: ‘Thy will he done!’” Here he stopped, and the visitor opened the door and stepped in to the poor woman’s bed-side.
“Your child has been praying for you,” said he, “I stood outside and listened to his prayer.”
“Yes,” she replied, trying hard to turn herself, “he is a dear boy. I now thank God for his going to Sunday-school. I cannot read myself; but he has read for me out of the Bible, and I have great reason to be thankful to God for that. In, this way I have learned that I was a sinner; but, through my boy, I have also heard of Jesus Christ, and now I put all my trust in Him. I am convinced that He has received me. I know I shall soon die, but I am not afraid. My dear child has been the means of my salvation. Oh, how thankful I am that he went to Sunday-school!”
Still a while the visitor conversed with the dying widow and her child about Him, who now was so precious to their hearts, and then he went home again with a happy and thankful heart, praising the gracious Lord for using His own means to reach the sinner’s heart and make it happy. What the boy had heard in the Sunday-school was the cause of his own conversion as well as of his mother’s.
ML 04/03/1903