The Heavy Load Rolls Away

“The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” — from Matthew 4

Ramabai had been baptised. She taught about Jesus and ran a school. But deep inside, she felt that something was missing. She had read many books about the Bible, but she had not read the Bible itself very much. So she began to read it every day.

It did not make her happy at first. It made her see that she was not ready to meet God. She knew she had sins she could not get rid of on her own. She wrote that she needed “Christ, and not merely His religion.” She did not just need to know about Jesus. She needed Jesus himself.

So, about the year 1891, she gave herself completely to Jesus. She asked him to take away all her sin. She said it felt as if a great, heavy load was rolled off her heart. It was like being in a dark room and suddenly seeing a great light.

What made her happiest was that God’s love is a free gift. As a girl she had been taught that you had to earn God’s favour, and that women could not be saved as women. Now she read that Jesus died for us while we were still sinners. “What good news,” she wrote, “for me, a woman!”

Two years later, in 1893, a great storm broke over her school. Some of the important men who had helped her were angry that girls were praying with her. They left, and many families took their daughters away. People wrote cruel things in the newspapers, and some even sent letters threatening her life. Ramabai was afraid. But she trusted God, and she came through it braver than before. God, she said, had set her free from being afraid of what people thought.

Knowing about Jesus is good. But Jesus wants you to know him, and to trust him yourself. His love is a free gift, for girls and boys everywhere.

Dear Jesus, I don’t just want to know about you. I want to know you. Please take away my sin and fill me with your light. Amen.