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Mary lay in the Borden hospital bed feeling neglected, blue, and out of sorts. What was going to become of her? Where was she headed? The doctor had said she had cancer. What if her life were coming to an end?
Vacantly she stared across the bland hospital room at the window where a narrow sunbeam shone in through the curtains. In it floated specks of dust.
Then a man came into the room, walking right through that sunbeam, and stood beside her bed. He seemed friendly enough, introducing himself as Arnold, and asking questions about God and the Bible. When he asked if he could read out of the Bible to her, she nodded solemnly.
It made sense to her, so when Arnold asked if she'd like to pray the sinner's prayer to ask God's forgiveness for her sins, she nodded again, and repeated the words after him. What could it hurt? Maybe God was listening.
Arnold left her a handful of tracts, and departed.
Mary occupied herself with reading the tracts, and the Gideon's Bible in the bedside stand. In the long quiet hours she had time to think about what she read, and the prayer she had prayed.
A week later Arnold returned to Mary's hospital room. They had a good, friendly visit together, talking about things of the Lord.
Some time later, Mary was just setting some live flowers outside her door for the night. Arnold, who had begun weekly hospital visits with tracts to pass out, came up the hospital corridor. "Years ago I asked Rev. C..... to do my funeral," she said to him, "but now I would like to have you do it. Only I must keep my promise to Rev. C.... so will you be an honorary pallbearer?"
"Why me?" he asked, surprised.
"Because of what you did for me."
Mary explained that he had led her in the sinner's prayer, something no one else had ever done. Since then God's presence was shining in her heart, and she was grateful. She knew she was going to Heaven.
(based on a true story, experienced by Arnold Stobbe)
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