Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.
WE do not know the story of the Penitent Thief…..Like all of us, he had gone wrong; unlike most of us, he had been caught…. As all of us must, he saw his life now, and at last, in one piece: All that he might have been and all that he had become….God gave him the last gift of the dying, the full vision of the beginning and the end….Out of it, as so often since that afternoon, came the sweet flower of his repentance: “Lord, remember me when Thou comest into Thy kingdom.”… He who had just prayed for pardon for His murderers cannot turn away from a thief: “Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise.”…. “Today!”…. The word falls, serene and sure, unshadowed by doubt….
Men may argue endlessly about eternity and speculate fruitlessly about the hereafter….Here it is, the inn of heaven for two travelers who had met at the crossing of the Way of Sorrows and the way of sin….It was already past noon….Before twilight they were friends, inseparable forever….“With Me!”... “In Paradise.”…God and a thief….God and we….So He will be kind to us at the Last Day….He knows what we are and what we shall be….Now we can be content to wait until our own day fades to its dim evening….His voice will be the music of bells at evensong, no longer from a cross, but from a throne, with the warm immediacy and urgency of a heaven nearer than we had dared to hope….“Today!”…
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