Lift up your eyes
The writer of the book of Hebrews, after using the entire eleventh chapter listing the great heroes of the faith asks, “What more can I say?” Then he explains that time would fail him to list all of those “who through faith conquered kingdoms, stopped the mouths of lions, were tortured, burned alive, beaten, stoned, and sawn in two.”
This is the great cloud of witnesses that surrounds each and every one of us.
There is a very strange legend that has been passed down about old St. Martin. He sat in the monastery one day busily engaged in his sacred studies. Suddenly there was a knock at the door. “Enter,” St. Martin called out. The door opened and in stepped a stranger dressed in princely attire.
“Who are you?” asked St. Martin. “I am Christ,” the stranger answered. The confident bearing and commanding tone of the visitor would have overawed a man less wise.
But St. Martin gave his visitor one deep, searching glance and quietly asked, “Where is the print of the nails?” Confused by the searching test-question, and having his base deception exposed, the prince of evil—for so he was—vanished from the sacred cell.
General John B. Gordon was a candidate for U. S. senator from Georgia shortly after the Civil War. At that time senators were elected by the state legislature. One of the members had fought with General Gordon. For some reason he had come to dislike the general and had decided to vote against him.
General Gordon was present on the platform when the roll call vote was taken. When the old soldier’s name was called, he rose to cast his vote against the man by whose side he had fought for four long years.
As he stood his eyes came to rest on a ragged scar on the general’s face, a scar that spoke of valor and suffering. For a moment the soldier stood silent. Then with great emotion he quietly said, “I can’t vote against him. I had forgotten the scar.”
This is the ultimate test that must be applied to all of life.
Each of us must ask ourselves, “Where are the marks; where is the print of the nails?” Nothing is truly of Christ which doesn’t bear this mark.
Clyde Nichols is a retired minister, having served First Christian Church in Temple for 27 years as senior minister. He is the author of three books of devotionals and writes a religious column for several Texas newspapers, including The Reporter.
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