Gold-Exchanged Lives.

Jesus says that our money in its new form will be waiting our arrival on the other side. The men and women into whose lives we have been exchanging it will be eagerly looking for us as the ship pulls into port. When you get through with your life down here--it will be a long life, I hope--you will go up and into the homeland. And--I suppose--at the first you will have eyes and heart for nobody but Jesus. My mother used to say to me, "I have thought that I would like to have a talk with Moses, and with Elijah, and with John and Paul, but"--with the quick tears of deepest emotion filling her dark eyes--"I have never been able in my thinking of it, to get past Jesus yet." Even so it will be, no doubt, with all of us.

But this word of Jesus' own suggests that as you go in you will find some one coming eagerly up with outstretched hands and such a glad face to meet you. And he will say, "Oh! I have been looking forward so eagerly to meeting you; welcome." And you will say, "Well, this is very kind of you. But, pardon me, I can't just recall your face. Where was it I knew you? in New York?"

And he will say, with a flush of earnest feeling, "Oh, no! I never saw New York. And I never saw you before. My home was over in the heart of China. Our lives were very miserable there. There was a great tugging at my heart that nothing seemed ever to ease. But one day a stranger came into our village, with some little books, and as we gathered about him he talked to us about Jesus, and you can never know how that story of Jesus came to me, and how much it meant. My whole life was changed, and my home and our village were changed. And since coming up here I have learned that it was through you that that man came, and I want to thank you. Next to Jesus I think you're the best friend I have."

And you will be thinking, "I'm so glad I gave that money. I had to pinch quite a bit, but that's nothing compared to the joy of this." And as that is flashing swiftly through your thought, here is somebody else eagerly pressing up, with the same word of welcome, and a face with such a glad light the sight of which is alone quite enough to even up any sacrifice. And you will say maybe, "And where did I meet you? are you from China, too?"

No, this one is from a western frontier settlement where the home missionary had gone, and now this one elbowing by her with the same lightened face is from the mountain section of the South. And so they come eagerly up from many places where you have never been in person but where you have gone potentially through your money. That is what Jesus means. Make to yourselves friends by means of money which the unrighteous world reckons riches, that when it fails they may welcome you eagerly into the homeland. Exchange your gold into lives.