The tableau

Wednesday 5 May 2021

Each was judged according to his way of acting. Revelation 20. 13

We do not make fun of God. What a man sows he will also reap. Galatians 6. 7

The tableau

A long time ago a rich man visited an art gallery. Suddenly his attention was caught by an impressive tableau. It represented a poor woman surrounded by her children. With a pleading look, she held out her hand to a man whose face was left over : her heart was numb to this woman's misery.

The visitor remained there, petrified. A scene came back to him. Sure enough, he recognized his own features in the man's face. The tears of the poor woman, whom he had once evicted from her accommodation, reproached him again. She hadn't been able to pay her rent and, with his hard heart, he had put her on the streets with his children.

No doubt : the tableau was signed with the name of the son of this woman, who in the meantime had become a famous painter. Now the rich man was faced with his own actions. This sight was unbearable to him. How gladly he would have destroyed this tableau !

A day will come when any human being who does not believe in God will have to see all the movie of his life. Today the dark passages of our existence can still be erased by faith in Jesus Christ, and confession to God of our faults. But the one who now refuses to receive God's forgiveness and his grace, founded on the sacrifice of his Son, will one day, before the divine tribunal, face all his guilt, without hope of forgiveness. It will be too late then.

(after Näher zu Dir 2016)

Source (The Good Seed)