One night, about 3:00 a.m., I was awakened by someone pounding on my door. There was a man there who was an entire stranger to me. He said, “I have come to ask you to go with me to pray for a dying girl.”
When I suggested that I would come as soon as it was daylight, he said he feared it would be too late; so I got ready to go. As I was dressing, he said, “I want to be fair with you and tell you where you are going. It is a shameful place, but this girl seems to have known you, and asked me to come as she wants you to pray with her.”
I set his mind at rest on that by telling him it did not matter where she was, if she wanted me to pray with her; I would go down with him.
He took me down into the low district and into a house where I found a poor girl in her teens. It was very evident that she was soon to meet her Maker.
“I don’t think you know me,” she said, “but I know you, and I knew you’d come and pray with me—for I am going to die. The girls here do not believe I am, but I know that I am going.”
While I was wondering just how I could bring that poor soul to a living Saviour, she solved the proem by asking me if there was not a story in the Bible about a sheep that had left the fold, and of the Shepherd who had gone after it and brought it back again? “Oh, yes,” I said, “that is the parable of the ninety-and-nine, and the one that went astray.”
“Yes,” she murmured over and over, “the one that went astray.” Then she led me on as she asked, “Can you find that in the Bible?”
“Yes,” I said. “It is in the 15th chapter of Luke,” and I turned to it to read. But I never understood it before as I did that night, when her comment on “the one that went astray” gave the real point to the parable.
When I finished reading in Luke 15 about the Great Shepherd, I turned over to John’s narrative about the Good Shepherd who gave eternal life to the sheep. As I knelt to pray by that dying girl, the other girls knelt, too, sobbing by their companion’s bed! What an audience was there! I have preached to vast congregations, but never was a meeting more hallowed by the presence of the Lord Jesus than this! As I prayed there, the conscious feeling that she was being lifted into the very light and love of God gripped me.
I shall never forget the expression on that face when I looked up.
“Oh!” she cried, “Oh! it is wonderful! The Good Shepherd has found me, and He is holding me to His heart!”
I have never heard that expression before, but over and over she kept repeating it. How I thanked God that He had given me a gospel of grace, for what message would I have had for a dying sinner like that, if works or merit were demanded?
That poor lost sheep was so happy in her new-found joy that I really wondered if the lifting of that burden of sin from her heart was not giving her physical strength that might bring recovery; and so I ventured to go home—but when I returned later, I knew the end had come, for the undertaker was entering the house as I came up. One of the other girls came out to meet me, and her first words were: “My!” We all wish you had been here when Mary passed away. She was so happy! She kept saying, ‘The Shepherd has found me and is holding me to His heart.’ You may say it was all fancy, but I believe He did. She actually tried to clasp her arms around the Unseen, and then, with a soft ‘Good-bye’ to us girls, she was gone.”
Some years later, I was preaching the gospel in a city. A young woman came to me, and smilingly asked, “Don’t you recognize me?” When I replied that I could not just say for sure, she said: “Yes, I think you do. I am the girl that told you of Mary’s passing that morning, and how happy she was in her new-found joy, as she died, saying, “The Shepherd has found me and is holding me to His heart!” But there is something I want to tell you. The morning when the Good Shepherd brought Mary in on His shoulders, I came, too.”
Of course, this brought me great joy, and increased my confidence in the saving power of the gospel of Jesus Christ—the wonderful story of love.
ML-01/27/1980