LOW moans broke on the stillness of a clear, calm evening, near Sierra Leone. The hot African sun had set, but in the evening light a hut, near a cluster of palm trees, could be seen. Again and again the moans, which evidently came from the hut, were repeated, but were only answered by the waving of the palms; all else was perfectly still.
Presently a native went to the hut, and something like the following conversation took place between him and another native, who was lying, evidently in great pain, on a crude bed.
“Why has your wife left you all day?” asked the newcomer; “and when will she return?”
“I expected her before sunset,” replied the sick man. “I asked her to go, and she has walked all the way to the white man’s house, near Waiae. I went past there some months ago, and heard him, telling the people about ‘the water of life,’ I did not need it then, for I was well and strong, and did not want life-giving water. But now this burning fever has seized me, I need it. These parched lips yearn for the water of life about which he spoke; so my wife set off to go to the missionary to beg for some. I know he gives it away, for he kept saying, ‘Let him take the water of life freely’; and that’s all I have remembered of his words.
“All, I hear steps,” said the sick man; “it is my wife come back!” And eagerly he raised himself, and anxiously gazed at the newcomer. She was an African woman, with a warm heart, for love to her husband had made her walk twenty miles, carrying her baby on her back. She sank down on the ground, evidently very tired. But her husband eagerly held out his burning hands, exclaiming, “Have you brought it? Did you carry it in the gourd you took? Was it big enough?”
The woman rose, and stooping over him, said, “The white man is good; he has sent a book to tell about the water of life. It is given by the white man’s God, and we cannot see it, but the missionary will ask Him to give it to you. And I will read you what the white man read to me about it in this book, written by the good man’s God.”
But her poor husband sank back exhausted, and bitterly disappointed that his wife had returned without what he expected. She prepared a powder, sent by the missionary for the invalid, and then holding out a little Testament to the friend sitting with him, she said, “Can you read this, at the two places where it is marked?”
“I think I can,” he answered; “I learned to read out of the white man’s Book before I left Sierra Leone.”
And with a little difficulty he read aloud the beautiful words of Christ to the woman of Samaria, in the fourth chapter of John. Attentively the sick man listened, while the weary wife, after laying the babe in its rough cradle, seemed to hang on every word, in her interest forgetting to eat the dinner she had prepared for herself.
Three times that evening the poor native went over those sacred words, and then left to get a few hours sleep. But night after night he came to the hut by the palm trees, to read to his friends out of what they called “the Book written by the white man’s God.”
God by His Holy Spirit taught those three poor natives the true meaning of “the water of life.” After several weeks, when the missionary was able to visit them, he found that the simple medicines he had sent had been blessed to the sick man’s recovery. But better still, they were all hungering and thirsting after righteousness. Before many months had passed, they were all rejoicing in a newfound Saviour.
“If any man thirst, let Him come unto Me and drink,” are the words of the Lord Jesus, Alas, too many of us are like the sick man in our story. Because we are young, and life looks bright and pleasant, we say, “I am well and strong, and do not need life-giving water.” In our minds we think that someday — when we are older and things do not look so bright and pleasant—we will come to Jesus and ask for the water of life.
We forget that godliness hath “promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come,” and that we do not know if we shall live to be older. “Boast not thyself of tomorrow"—much less of after years—“for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.”
“I heard the voice of Jesus say,
‘Behold I freely give
The living water, thirsty one,
Stoop down, and drink, and live.’
I came to Jesus, and I drank
Of that life-giving stream;
My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,
And now I live in Him.”
“JESUS STOOD AND CRIED, SAYING, IF ANY MAN THIRST, LET HIM COME UNTO ME, AND DRINK,” John 7:3737In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. (John 7:37).
ML-10/09/1960