Daily Devotional

He held the knife, his mind racing. He brought it up to his neck.

Pictures raced through his mind: the drug deal gone bad, the hundreds of thousands of dollars owed, the contracts out on people’s lives—but most of all, his family. What would they do to his wife and kids? If it ended with him right here, right now, maybe his family would be safe.

Then he heard a voice, still and small. “It is not your time yet.” He struggled to listen. But there was another voice too, a different and more persuasive voice. It would be so easy to just go through with it. The knife was so close.

Now he was on his knees, the conflict raging within. Finally, he pushed in the knife.

Suddenly the door burst open, and everything went black.

When Bernard came to, he was in the ICU, staring up at a nurse. If the knife had gone in one more centimeter, he was told, he would have lost his voice box.

Later, he learned that his wife had called the police after she had talked to him earlier that day. She had realized that he was going to do something horrible. It was the police who had found him bleeding on the floor and had raced him to the hospital. After all that, the voice had been right. It was not his time. He had been given a second chance.

Bernard had grown up on the streets of New York City, in gangs, with drugs and alcohol, and in the music scene. His dad was Catholic, his mother a Sabbath-keeper. His parents had divorced and, after her own conversion, his mother began to live out her faith.

After getting out of the ICU, Bernard started attending a non- denominational church. But it seemed like something was stopping him at every turn, including a terrible divorce and six months in jail. Finally, he found himself back in his mother’s home and driving trucks for a living.

His mom would talk to him regularly about the Sabbath, but all he could remember was how she had sneaked them to church on Saturdays whenever his dad was not around. He hated it. Besides, every good Christian knew that keeping the seventh-day Sabbath was just legalism—right?

Reflect: In truth, God has given all of us a second chance ... and perhaps more. Now is the time to use your lease on life to be a blessing to others.