.....hard

And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house Acts 16:31

Lydia’s heart opened quietly by a river on a Sabbath morning. In the same city, only days later, God opened another heart, this time with an earthquake at midnight.

Paul and Silas had been beaten with rods and thrown into the inner prison, their feet locked in stocks. The man who fastened them there was the Philippian jailer, a hard man in a hard job who simply followed orders. Yet at midnight, instead of groaning, his prisoners were praying and singing hymns. Then the ground shook, the doors flew open and every chain fell loose. Waking to open doors, the jailer assumed his prisoners had escaped, and he drew his sword, believing his life was finished. Paul’s voice rang out of the darkness: “Do thyself no harm: for we are all here.” Trembling, the jailer fell before them and asked the question of his life: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?”

You might ask, “Surely a man like that needed a long list of things to fix first?” He had treated these men cruelly only hours before. Yet Paul and Silas did not hand him a program of reform or a period of probation. Their answer was one sentence: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. His test was whether he would trust that the gift was really that free, offered to someone like him, right then.

Ellen White speaks directly to every heart that feels too far gone: “Jesus loves to have us come to Him just as we are, sinful, helpless, dependent” Steps to Christ, p. 52. The jailer came with nothing but his fear and his need, and that was where grace met him.

The change that followed was immediate. The man who had wounded these prisoners now washed their wounds. That same night he and his household were baptized, and he set food before them, rejoicing that he had come to believe in God. Grace did not wait for him to become gentle; it made him gentle.

Lydia teaches us that God works quietly in a seeking heart. The jailer teaches us that no heart is too hard for Him to reach, and that the way in is the same for everyone: believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.