The Dying Need No Beads

Go ahead, use the beads, if they will aid

Your prayer, the divine seat of power reach;

Any crutch that helps pierce the murky shade

Between pleader and God speeds the beseech;

But if the glass is used to help remind

The child of God how worthy the request,

It should not be for comfort of the kind

That redeems the soul in dire travail best!

Does the drowning need his memory jog

To send skyward his last despairing prayer?

Or the dying report his miry bog

Before screaming to any god for care?

Prayer for the dying soul with dying needs

Demands no rote speech, or counting glass beads!



The rosary beads of our Catholic brothers may be helpful for reciting countless memorized prayers. Anything that gives comfort and confidence, helping strugglers in this world to praise and worship God, is certainly worthwhile. But the person whose life has been lived apart from God and is in iminiment danger of death and having his soul taken by Satan to hell to spend eternity needs no rote formula to cry out for help to the Savior Jesus Christ. In such a situation the beads that are a comfort to the believer whose soul is safely in the care of Jesus Christ would be of little help to the lost and dying one.



Any kind of cry for help from sinner to Savior is instantly recognized by the One Who gave His life so that any that ask for help can be saved. An unintelligible moan can convey guilt and remorse as well as carefully worded prayers which have been repeated many times. A lost soul near death and on the edge of a dreadful eternity can get God's attention with a gesture, a cry, or even with pleading eyes fixed on the throne of God. Didn't the dying thief on the cross next to Jesus make a last-minute request to be remembered by the Son, and didn't the answer convey the good news that on the very day he would be in Paradise with the dying Savior? As long as life remains to a person, it is not too late to be admitted to heaven. Call for him in any way possible, and He will take care of you.