There is a touch of genius in the description that John Bunyan, the immortal dreamer, gave of the death of Christiana, the wife of Christian, who in the allegory followed her husband to the Celestial City. He described how she journeyed to Beulah land, “where the sun shines night and day.” Evidently Christiana had become old and infirm. Weariness marked her, and she waited for the summons to the everlasting home.
One day a stir was made. A post had arrived from the Celestial City with tidings of great importance for one, Christiana, the wife of Christian, the pilgrim. The post presented her with the letter, which ran as follows: “Hail, good woman! I bring thee tidings that the Master calls for thee, and expects that thou shouldest stand in His presence, in clothes of immortality within this ten days.”
There was a sure token that the messenger did indeed bring the summons of the King, and that was “an arrow with a point sharpened with love, let easily into her heart, which by degrees wrought so effectually with her, that at the time appointed she must be gone.”
The thought of an arrow sharpened by love is a real stroke of sanctified genius. It gives us the thought, it may be, of a painful illness, but that love is at the back of it, and that, though at may be a rugged path, it leads to HOME and REST and INEFFABLE BLISS. Old age is a very real thing. Christians, who once were active, find one power after another leave them. Their tether gets shorter and shorter.
Christians often fear death. As old age approaches the fear sometimes becomes acute. As someone has said, It is the dying they fear, not death. It is the weakness and pain and difficulty of dissolution that fills them with foreboding, not the thought of being actually with the Lord. How this might be alleviated if the thought of the arrow sharpened by love were kept in mind.
The fact is, we shall not get grace for dying till the dying time arrives, if the Lord does not come first. Let us then seek grace for living; if old and feeble, grace to live in that condition—which grace the Lord will abundantly minister, if we only seek it. Let the grace for dying not trouble us. It will come when it is needed. The Lord will not fail us “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me,” is as true for the end of the journey as for only a portion of it, for “the valley of the shadow of death” surely means the whole of our life in this world. Let our minds dwell on the heavenly scene. Let us be at home with the Lord now, and we shall rejoice to think that we shall actually be with Him where He is, in that land of pine delight, for ever.
An aged saint gave utterance to the thought that there was only a cobweb between him and the glory, and it only needed the hand of the Lord to brush it aside, and he would be with Him.
We can take the words of the Psalmist, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever” (Ps. 23:6), and be content about our present and our future.