THE HEIRESS of a Chicago stockyard fortune was seriously ill. No doctor was able to cure her, so in their search for help they took her to a Vienna physician by the name of Adolph Lorenz. Using a new technique, which was soon called “bloodless surgery,” Dr. Lorenz operated, and the girl recovered. The news of this spread around the world, so that soon he was asked to make a tour of American hospitals. His purpose in coming to America was to explain to surgeons here his technique, but everywhere he went he was besieged with requests from people imploring his personal help for loved ones. Of course, there were only very few for whom he had time, and this made one experience he had all the more tragic.
One day while in a mid-western city, Dr. Lorenz craved a little solitude. Guards were always present to protect him, but now, late one afternoon, he managed to slip away to take a walk through the residential streets of the city alone. In the midst of his stroll he was overtaken by a sudden and violent thunderstorm. So fierce was the downpour and no other shelter being near, he rang the doorbell of the nearest house. When a woman opened the door he asked if he could come in. But the woman, visibly upset and exasperated, cried out; “Go somewhere else. There is enough trouble in this house!” And with this she slammed the door shut.
Dr. Lorenz stood outside in the rain until presently a car with guards searching for him stopped and hurried him to the hotel. When that inhospitable housewife looked at a newspaper the next day, she recognized the front-page picture of the famous doctor and screamed with dismay. The sad fact was that her daughter was suffering from the same illness, as had the stockyard heiress; and she had written letters to the hotel, entreating Dr. Lorenz to come to her house and make her child well. But now she had shut the door in his face.
Tragic as this was, for she never had another opportunity, what shall we say about those who close the door to One who is infinitely greater than Dr. Lorenz or anyone else? Listen to His words: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” (Revelation 3:20). If the stockyard heiress and the daughter of this woman needed the services of Dr. Lorenz, because no other physician was known who could help them, how much more do we need the “Great Physician” who alone can “wash us from our sins in his own blood?” (Revelation 1:5).
Just as Dr. Lorenz came to the very door of this woman's house seeking entrance, so the Lord Jesus Christ has come and knocked at your heart's door. As you are reading this, do you not feel that the Lord is speaking to you and saying in a soft, gentle voice: “Behold, I stand at the door, (your heart's door) and knock?” He came to this earth, born as a babe in Bethlehem's manger, in order that He might “save us from our sins.” (Matthew 1:21). Sin is like an incurable disease - a disease no mere man can cure. But Christ, the Son of God, can and will if we but open our heart's door to Him.
Reader, are your sins forgiven-forgiven eternally? To depart out of this world with our sins upon us is tragic beyond expression. And to think that it need not be so, and will not be, except by one's deliberate choice; because they closed the door when He, the Lord of glory, sought entrance, not to judge, but to save our souls from eternal ruin. “For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” (John 3:17).
Behold Him standing at the door,
And hear Him pleading o'er and o'er,
With gentle voice, ‘O heart of sin,
May I come in? May I come in?’
-J.F.P.