The Unbeliever looked for the Lord in books but found nothing to convince him. The Unbeliever looked for the Lord in humans and found no one good enough. The Unbeliever looked for the Lord in nature but found only striving and blood. The Unbeliever looked for the Lord in technology and science and the other deeds of man, but found no hope there. He read the Christian Bible, but found it full of much of what he had already discovered. The Unbeliever then, through lack of evidence, convinced himself that God doesn't exist. The world welcomed him with open arms, a hero to the unbelieving. Someone wanted that unbeliever though, someone who does not give up easily.
Years passed, and the Unbeliever felt the pains of growing older. Modern medicine helped him some, but cures for the worst of his ills and pains were themselves often brutal, slow, and not entirely effective. While looking upward from a hospice bed one morning, the Unbeliever began to ask, "God are you there?" Death stood in the corner of his room, but something held it at bay for the moment. A cacophonous parade of sins marched past, but greatest of all of them, the champion anchoring the entire line, was his own cherished unbelief. Near to Death it stood, powerful and unrepentant, a sin to be reckoned with. The Unbeliever had found no hope in his unbelief and he had none to comfort him at the end. Death drew closer.
Suddenly the parade ended, frozen in the midst of their celebration, stopped cold by someone. A man stood beside Death. A man of no particular beauty, one that a person might overlook in a crowd. He told the Unbeliever that the entire parade of sin had been paid for long ago on a cross near Jerusalem. As the man had paid for them, he wanted them back. All the Unbeliever had to do was believe.
We know that story in a way because we too looked for evidence of the senses at one time and found it not. We walk near Death every day as the multitude of possible deaths pass us on every side. We wish that every unbeliever might meet the Lord and believe as Doubting Thomas did. Some do meet Jesus: Paul on the Damascus road, Stephen as the heavens opened before him, and John as he was called up there. One did not believe and two very much did believe in the Lord. Most of us will not get to meet our Lord until that moment when He brings us home. Yet we believe, and we pray for those who do not. Those prayers are not ignored. Perhaps even now a lifelong unbeliever will meet the Lord in his last few moments. Keep on praying!
Have a wonderful day in Christ!
Bucky
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