VISITING ONE A HUNDRED YEARS OLD

Part II

The consistory of Clifton had often invited me to come, but there was no opportunity. Finally after 14 months the way was opened. I arrived in the East on Friday afternoon, and from Friday until Wednesday evening I preached there five times. On Saturday there was an opportunity to visit various friends and families. On Saturday afternoon I could also visit that old friend. Considering her age, and the manifold weaknesses, I had not thought, that it would ever happen again. But it was made manifest that we are but of yesterday, and know nothing. Sometimes strong persons just pass away, and weak persons sometimes get so old that no one can understand it. While thinking of the many visits of the past, and the pleasant conversations we often had, from which sometimes something had gone out, I was glad to hear that she was still in the land of the living. She was still in Mesech, but old and ready to vanish away. If she might still live, she would become 100 years old the following Thursday. My brother-in-law brought me to the building where she had been cared for for a few years now. There was almost nothing left of her body any more. I went to sit beside her bed, and, of course, asked her how she was. She said nothing about the condition of her body, but her first word was: “Daily I must ask the Lord whether He will still convert me”. And friends, I cannot write how that fell into my heart. Those few words struck me so. I said to her: “Then you are a sister, and out of the family of Jeremiah.”

So clearly she said: “Of the family of Jeremiah?” “Yes,” was my answer, “The prophet who was sanctified from the womb, had to pray in Lamentation 5:21: “Turn Thou us unto Thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned.’” It became a lively and pleasant conversation for a moment. Outwardly she was very deaf, but still understood all that was said. Through the discovering of the Spirit, she still spoke a language which is not heard so much anymore.

No, this time it was not complaining and murmuring; what we heard from her mouth was that the Lord was just in all His ways and works. She had nothing to say, and nothing to complain that afternoon, but she did have a sigh that her faith might be strengthened once more. I also asked her what had to happen with the hope, and her answer was: “Quickened”; and the charity, she said “Awakened.” She gave a clear and distinct answer, to the question I asked her. Really, it was a wonder, and then so old, and coming up out of the poverty of her spirit.

A bosom friend recently wrote a letter, about the times we are now living in: now-a-days there are so many people who speak about being drawn up into the third heavens, but you can notice from what they say, that they never made an acquanitance with hell. It was still good to set at that deathbed for half an hour (it could not be longer because of her weakness), to sit with such an impoverished, and worn-out soul. Nothing in herself but misery, guilt and sin, but her only hope was that God might be gracious unto her. Yea, that “healthy christendom” of our days, cannot suffer such souls for five minutes. They shun the company of such, they look down upon them as “wretches”, poor wretches. Yes, friends, they are a strange people and it is a strange life. When the Lord gives them something, then they have all, and if they miss it, then they miss all. But indeed, it must be known to be understood. It is hid from the wise and prudent, but revealed unto babes. Matt. 11:25. Much is spoken about these matters, (myself included) but speaking out of it is something different. We might yet sigh a few words for and with that woman, and then committed her unto God and the words of His Divine grace, and then we took our leave.

I might meditate about that meeting and conversation for some days. It was really a preparation for the Sabbath. I had some comfort from it for myself, when I preached twice the next day about Zach. 9:9, and even Monday evening for the third time. Sunday afternoon in the Holland we spoke about being rich in God.

Whitefield, the English minister once wrote, “If I may speak a few hours from heart to heart with God s people, then I again have matter to speak for a few weeks.” The riches which is in God, and which may be experienced, is lived out in the deepest poverty. Poor and rich, rich and poor. The friend was more then 30 years older than I, whom I might hear tell with a few words, how the Lord strips and breaks off His people, to make them susceptible for the grace of God in Christ. Soon they will enter heaven as poor, naked, guilty and miserable sinners, but also as delivered sinners. Nothing in us, but all in Him, thus we come in Jerusalem.

And now we cannot become jealous of the misery, as a result of the fall of Adam, but we can be jealous of the misery, as a fruit of the discovering work of the Holy Spirit. The Lord says in Numbers 14:34: “And ye shall know my breach of promise,” and in Hosea 2:3 that the Lord shall strip her naked, and set her as in the day when she was born. In our old age we must learn lessons of which we understood nothing in our whole life. That friend, about whom I now wrote, had told me years ago, that not so many years after she was brought by grace, upon the way of life, she was at a gathering, where an old experienced child of God had said: “Friends, I am longing that the Lord will yet give me a grape from that cluster which the spies brought along out of Canaan.” Whereupon she had answered, out of the fullness of her heart: “Only one grape? I have a whole cluster.”

But she said to me, “Now I can understand what that man meant. In my old age I must now often ask, whether the Lord would still give me one grape.” Thereby you can see how it can all change in our life.

And then later we must come in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is, Psalm 63:1. The Lord never is a barren wilderness or a land of darkness for His people, for the river of God is full of water. But how we become aware in our life that we cannot bring ourselves there. The Lord must even work that desire in our hearts by His Spirit, a true desire. And then they experience: “With the abundance of Thy house we shall be satisfied, from rivers of unfailing joy our thirst shall be supplied” (Psalter 94:3). Thus our thirst shall be supplied. It is all the work of God. (Continued)

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