"You'll Know Where to Find Me"

An elderly pastor lay critically ill. In the opinion of his doctor he could live only a few days more. His wife put through a tong-distance call to their son, who-was also a pastor and who served a congregation in a small town three hundred miles away.

Within a few hours the son was at the father's bedside, and the two men prayed together. Saturday came, and there was no change in they elderly man's condition. Calling his son to his bedside, he spoke in, a weak and faltering voice:

"Go back to your congregation, son, and preach tomorrow. if I should slip away while you are gone, you'll know where to find me." 

"You'll know where to find me!" What a wonderful thing, when a father can speak thus to his children!  What a wonderful thing at the sunset of life, to know just where. we will be at eternity's dawn—in our Father's house, in the company of our Saviour who has gone ahead to prepare a place for us. And what a wonderful thing for a father who is taking leave of his children to know that they, too, have learned the way to the place where he is going; and that they, too, by God's grace, will share a mansion in the Father's house above.

"You'll know where to find me!" Let those of us who are fathers and mothers ask ourselves: have we arrived at that spiritual certainty which will enable us, at the end of life, to say: "1 know where I am going"? And have we passed on this knowledge and this faith to our children so that we can say confidently to them: "You'll know where to find me"?

We can do both if, by God's grace, we root our faith—our own and that of our children—firmly in Him who died for us and who even now is awaiting our arrival in His Father's house above.

—Herman W. Gockel