Because He lives

               It is my favorite of the stories that I have heard Ravi tell over the radio.  It is a testimony to the saving power of God’s Word and His grace to believers and their children.  It is a story that encourages me to pray for my children.

              Ravi grew up in India.  At the age of 17, despairing of any meaning in life, he attempted suicide.  While recovering following that experience, Ravi was given a Bible by a man who stopped by his hospital room.   Ravi’s mother, though she was not a Christian, read to him from the gospel of John as she kept faithful vigil by his bedside.  It is John 14:19 that Ravi credits as the verse that first planted Hope within his heart:  “Because I live, you will live also.”

Later, Ravi’s mother was also converted to Christianity.  Still later, when she passed on to Life, Ravi had inscribed on her gravestone the verse that she had first read to him: “Because I live, you will live also.”

There is more to the story.  Many years prior to Ravi’s birth, Christian missionaries had witnessed to his grandparents, and Ravi’s grandmother was a believer in Jesus Christ.  Though he had never met her, it is her burial place that Ravi determines to find when he returns to India years after his mother’s death.  The keeper of the cemetery where his grandmother is buried locates her plot on a plot map and accompanies Ravi and his wife Margie to the site.  The stone is covered with years of dust and debris, and the groundskeeper stoops to clear it.  As his grandmother’s name becomes visible, Margie grabs Ravi’s arm, and Ravi’s breath catches in his throat.  There, engraved beneath her name, are these words: “Because I live, you will live also” John 14:19.

Do you worry about what the future holds for your children?  I do.  Are you concerned that you are unable to provide them all that they need physically or spiritually?  Me, too.  I do not doubt that Ravi’s grandmother also wondered those things.  And rightly so, because we are unable to provide them those things.  But we can be comforted with the knowledge that we, and our children – just like she and her children – belong to the God who is sovereign over all and faithful to His promises.

Way back in A.D. 390, preacher John Chrysostom gave this advice to parents, “If you wish to leave much wealth to your children, leave them in God’s care.”

Because He lives, you see, all who are His children will live also.