Tim was a clever pick-pocket. “Here’s a good one,” he said one day to himself as he saw a fat bulge in the hip-pocket of a man in front of him. “Easy does it,” he muttered silently, and he skillfully extracted what he thought was a well-filled purse and popped it safely into his jacket pocket.
When he got home, however, and sorted out his ill-gotten gains, he found to his disgust that it was only a book, and he threw it into a corner.
A few days later he noticed the Book where he had thrown it and, out of curiosity, he picked it up and started to read it. He kept on reading it-and it wasn’t very long before his life was completely changed!
Whatever book was it? It was a New Testament, and when he started to read it, it spoke to his heart and conscience. He soon realized that his way of life was all wrong, but as he read on, he found that God loved him and gave His dear Son, Jesus, to die for him so that his sins might be forgiven and his life transformed. He believed what God said, and his changed life was the result.
Some time after, holding up the very Book, he was telling how God had saved him. A man in the audience asked if he might look at the Book. He took it in his hands, and as he glanced at the fly-leaf, he said, “Ah, that’s what happened to my Testament!” It was the very man from whom the one time pick-pocket had stolen it. Now how happy the man was to find that the Book he had lost had been used by God to save the thief!
ML-02/12/1978