“Then they took Jesus and scourged him. And the soldiers plaited a crown of thorns and put it on his head and struck him with their hands. They mocked him and spit on him and at last Jesus had to bear his own cross out of the city to a certain place. There they crucified him. And for three hours there was darkness over all the earth, and Jesus cried out with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.”
I had reached the point of Jesus’ death in my story, and the little woman who was walking down the road with me clicked her tongue in sympathy and said, “So sin and evil won that time, too.” She thought for another moment, clicked sympathetically again and added, “And he was such a good and holy man, and yet sin and evil overcame him too.”
“Sin did not overcome him, Older Sister,” I cried with joy, glad for the joyous triumphant Easter news of our gospel. “For three days it looked as if sin and evil had overcome him, but then do you know what happened? He arose from the dead. Death couldn’t hold him. He was God and he overcame all sin and evil and did it that we might become victors.”
It was the first time she had ever heard the Good News. That afternoon when I caught up with her on the road she was homeward bound. The basket on her back was full of the week’s rations of flour and rice, and one of her young sons padded along barefooted behind her carrying kerosene and cooking oil.
To begin with we had talked “small talk,” then, curious, she asked me why I had come to their land and how I had learned their language. When in turn I asked her if she had heard of Jesus Christ, she asked, “And what is that?” So we walked down the road together, and I told her the wonderful story of a God who loves us and a Savior who came to save. That she had listened well and taken it in was evidenced by her remark when she heard of Jesus’ death, “so sin and evil won that time too.” And what could I have told her if our Savior had not risen? What message of hope would have been mine then? But oh, praise God! We serve a living Savior.
It was time for me to turn back. She thanked me over and over for our good talk, and then asked if I had any books which would tell her more about this Jesus. She couldn’t read but she had a son who was going to school who could read to her. So out of the bag came some tracts and the brightly colored copy of Mark’s Gospel. We parted, and I turned back to town. Every once in a while we would round a curve which, though it separated us farther and farther from each other, brought us in sight of one another again. I would look across, and the little woman would wave as a long lost friend until a final curve cut us off from one another’s sight.