MORNING MANNA 3-22-21
DOING WHAT YOU CAN
“—-ye shall be witnesses unto me–” Acts 1:8
Sometimes not having a handicap is our greatest handicap. Being unhindered we waste our lives in the pursuit or things of no eternal value. Here’s a story I read several years ago from a pastor who said: “I was deeply moved the other day by something that I read in an old, undated book of missionary stories that I found on the back shelf of a dusty, used book shop in London. The author told of a loathsome leper, old and dying, who came to the leprosarium operated by the Methodists in China. Someone had told him that he would find room there, and he had come there to die. He was in the final stages of the disease, clad in nothing more that a bit of burlap tied around him by a string. He had not a relative in the world. But in the leprosarium he settled down in the room given him and began talking with the Chinese chaplain. After hearing the Gospel, he was asked if he wanted to become a Christian. “No,” he said.
“Why not?”
“Because,” the poor man replied, “you say your Jesus died for me. He gave himself for me. I have nothing to give him in return for a gift like that.”
“Oh, he wants no gift except yourself.”
“But how could he possibly want an ill-smelling, rotten old leper like me? It can not be!”
But eventually the old leper was convinced, and he humbly asked Jesus Christ to come into his life as Savior and Lord. Then what did he do? He started limping from patient to patient, telling the good news——
But he had less than two years to live. Soon both of his feet dropped off, both of his eyes decayed from his head, and his life ebbed away. As he was dying, the chaplain came to his bedside for a final conversation. The old man felt badly that he had been converted so late in life. He worried that he had not done more. And when the chaplain leaned over to speak with him, the old fellow said this: “When I reach Father’s house, will Jesus blame me for not getting any more, or will he remember that I was just a rotten old leper? I only got fourteen.”
What did he mean? He meant that during his two years, he had won only fourteen souls for Christ. Fourteen souls! He only had twenty-four months, but he had been about his mission, side-by-side with the Bridegroom, doing what he could where he was.” What are you doing?
David Stone
Lakeway Baptist Church
Humble, Tx.
