God can work on snowy Sundays

February 8, 2010
Last Sunday’s service at Antioch brought out 60 brave souls. I came close to not going myself, or recommending to the other elders that we cancel. I’m glad we didn’t. When we opened the floor for discussion after the sermon, two people said God had spoken to them that day. One young man, a visitor, said that he was so thankful he had come to church, and asked if I had somehow collaborated with his host who had brought him: “Did he tell you what I was going through and what I needed to hear from God?”
Last Sunday brought to mind another snowy Sunday in history. It happened in England in January of 1850:
“I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair now, had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning, when I was going to a place of worship. When I could go no further, I turned down a court and came to a little Primitive Methodist Chapel. In that chapel there might be a dozen or fifteen people. The minister did not come that morning: snowed up, I suppose. A poor man, a shoemaker, a tailor, or something of that sort, went up into the pulpit to preach. He was obliged to stick to his text, for the simple reason that he had nothing else to say. The text was, ‘Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth’ (Isaiah 45:22). He did not even pronounce the words rightly, but that did not matter.
“There was, I thought, a glimpse of hope for me in the text. He began thus: ‘My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, ‘Look.’ Now that does not take a deal of effort. It ain’t lifting your foot or your finger; it is just ‘look.’ Well, a man need not go to college to learn to look. You may be the biggest fool, and yet you can look. A man need not be worth a thousand a year to look. Anyone can look; a child can look. But this is what the text says. Then it says, ‘Look unto Me.’ ‘Ay,’ said he, in broad Essex, ‘many of ye are looking to yourselves. No use looking there. You’ll never find comfort in yourselves.’ Then the good man followed up his text in this way: ‘Look unto Me: I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hanging on the Cross. Look: I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend; I am sitting at the Father’s right hand. O, look to Me! Look to Me!’ When he had got about that length, and managed to spin out 10 minutes, he was at the length of his tether.
“Then he looked at me under the gallery, and I daresay, with so few present, he knew me to be a stranger. He then said, ‘Young man, you look very miserable.’ Well, I did; but I had not been accustomed to have remarks made on my personal appearance from the pulpit before. However, it was a good blow struck. He continued: ‘And you will always be miserable — miserable in life and miserable in death — if you do not obey my text. But if you obey now, this moment, you will be saved.’”
Charles Spurgeon, the “prince of preachers,” told that story nearly 300 times in his ministry. And why not? God spoke clearly to a 15-year-old on that snowy day and changed his life forever.