The Lost Opportunity

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 28, 1872

The Lost Opportunity.

In the winter of 1859, during a time of special religious interest in Boston and vicinity, a man in Cambridgeport was impressed with the duty of laboring to save those around him, and felt especially urged to go and visit an old friend who was not a Christian, and talk with him about his soul’s salvation.

He delayed, hesitated, and neglected the oft-recurring admonitions of the Holy Spirit, for a considerable time; but he could not banish the subject from his mind, and at length one Saturday he started to do his errand.

He reached the house, entered and found his old friend in his coffin, dead, and soon to be buried; and he learned there that for some time before he died he had expressed a strong desire to see him and converse with him.

Alas, the opportunity was gone forever; the word in season was unspoken, and his aged friend had passed from mortal life.

We think sadly of such a lost opportunity, but are we not losing opportunities every day? Let us be watchful and diligent to do the Master’s will, and obey his every call, that we may be found of him in peace, without spot and blameless at last.—Christian.