Thought for the month....
September
Many years ago a young lad asked his parents if he could take his bike and tent to go camping. In those days it was safe to do so, but not today. He travelled around many places and one day came across a large and imposing farmhouse. He went to the front door and knocked. The farmer opened the door.
‘What do you want?’, he demanded.
‘Please may I pitch my tent in your field for the night?’
‘No!’, came the brusque reply.
Slightly disappointed, the young lad cycled a little further up the lane and came across a small cottage. Knocking at this door he wondered what the response would be. The elderly lady who opened the door was only too pleased for him to pitch his tent in the field belonging to her and her husband.
In the morning she invited the young lad to breakfast. He politely refused her kind offer but she was insistent and so he willingly accepted her kind invitation. After the meal she asked him to sign her Visitor’s Book. He gently declined the offer, but she said that all their visitors signed it.
He agreed and wrote ‘Edward’.
‘You must have a last name’, she said.
‘No, I am just known as Edward.’
‘But’, she said, ‘there is only one person known just as Edward and that is Prince Edward, the King’s son.’
He admitted that he was indeed Prince Edward.
Imagine their surprise and joy, that unbeknown to them they had allowed Prince Edward to camp in their field and join them for breakfast.
I wonder what the farmer, who lived back along the lane, thought when he heard that the King’s son had camped in his neighbour’s field. Also, that he had breakfasted in their cottage and that he himself had turned him away – sorrow, regret, shame?
It reminds me of another son, God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who left Heaven, and was born as a babe at Bethlehem. Why did He come?
The Bible tells us in 1 John chapter 4 verse 14,
“the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world”.
Also Matthew chapter 1 verse 21 tells us
“thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins`.
He came to be the Saviour. Our sin separates us from God. In the Bible Ezekiel chapter 18 verse 4 says
“the soul that sinneth, it shall die”.
Through Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension it is possible to have our sin forgiven, to know peace with God and know for certain that we will go to Heaven. How?
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved”,
Acts chapter 16 verse 31.
Just as the farmer rejected the King’s son, so the people of Christ’s day rejected the Him –
“He came unto his own, and his own received him not”,
John chapter 1 verse 11.
Many people today reject Him or ignore Him. I wonder do you already have peace with God or are you one of those that do not know God?
Yet God is
“not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance”
2 Peter 3 verse 9.
How comforting to know that Christ still says,
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come into him, and sup with him, and he with me”,
Revelation chapter 3 verse 20.
The cottage door was opened to the King’s son. Will you open your heart’s door and put your faith and trust in God’s Son?
Maybe you have already received Christ into your heart and life. What a privilege to share each day with the Lord Jesus.
BM