Sonlight Devotional

How I Came to Know Jesus

“That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” (John 1:9)

I was born of parents who had a mixture of French and African in them.  My father’s family were slave owners in Westmoreland, Jamaica, and my mother’s family were from African slaves.  I knew nothing of God.  Having grown up in a nominal church system I had a very poor opinion of Christians.  For me, there was no hope.  I knew I was wicked and I knew no one whom I could call righteous.  I had no answer either for my own wickedness or for the other people’s.  All of us children had inherited the spirits of anger and violence.  It was a familiar spirit, a spirit which possessed my family.  My father had it, and I understand my grandfa­thers did, too, – both from the African side of the family as well as from the French side.  Fighting was as natural to us as the air we breathed.  Fighting one another at home was more like practice to fight the enemy, who was anybody who crossed us.  The death wish was a necessary part of our equipment.  I, for one, was not happy in a fight unless I was hit, and I had to be hit hard enough in order to get the necessary excuse to want to kill the foe.  Being maimed and killed was not for me.  It was for the other person.  For years I had struggled against these spirits of blind anger and unbridled wrath, but it only grew worse as the years went by.  Whenever these spirits would take me, there was a sort of evil peace that I enjoyed.  I could enter into a fight and be instructed blow by blow how to destroy the enemy.

Deep chasms of despair would sometimes come over me.  The world and everything in it seemed doomed and hopeless.  I would think, “Nobody cares!  And after all, why should they?  They are all selfish creatures looking after their own business!”  I would ask myself, “Whoever chained me in this hell, anyhow?”

There must be a living devil, for hopeless despair turned into thoughts of self-destruction and the thoughts became actions.  In a game of football, cricket, or in boxing, the opponent became the enemy.  I could not understand why no one wanted to play against me.  Injuries were common among my opponents.  The deep despair of my own soul was communicated to all those around me in the form of the lack of value that was placed on human life as a whole and on my own life in particular.

A girl friend had been unfaithful to me.  The spirit of suicide told me to go to the beach, pretend I was just having a swim and swim out to sea until I was exhausted.  So I did.  That day I proved that there is God.

As I calmly swam out into the deep, past any distance I had ever gone before, I began to gloat how they will read the headline in the newspaper the next morning, “Swimmer drowned at Greenwich Farm.”  “Oh,” thought I, “they will not know it was suicide.”  A great voice shouted in my ear, “You fool!  GOD KNOWS.”  It was like waking up out of a dream.  Here I was, out in the ship channel in Kingston Harbor, Jamaica, suddenly realizing that I was a fool and I was heading for hell.  I did not know what hell was then, but I do not think that anyone, whether they have a clear idea of hell or not, wants to go there.

I turned around wondering if I could make it to the shore.  Upon the swells, I could see people on the shore.  They looked pretty small to me.  “If You will save me, God,” I said in my heart, “I will serve You.”  I had no idea of what “serve You” meant or who God was.  At that moment it did not really matter.  I had made it to about half a mile from the shore when suddenly there was a contraction in my right leg.  It got so bad that I could not swim with that leg any more.  The next thing I knew, the whole right side and the right arm contracted with severe pain.  I kept on swimming with my left arm and left leg alone.  Then the muscles in both my left arm and leg contracted and, tried as I might, I could not keep afloat.  I went under the water.  Immediately something touched my feet and I stood up with my head barely above water.  I never knew it was there before, neither did I find it after, but it was a sand dune.  It saved my life.

After this, many attempts of suicide followed.  In spite of all that happened over the years, I was not sure that there was a God who cared for humans.  I had moved away from my home in the city where I grew up and was now a civil servant working in a beautiful spot of God’s earth in Jamaica.  The battles of the mind are far more keenly fought than physical ones.  Hell had finally maneuvered me to a point of crisis.  Blind anger was raging through my being and I knew that soon I would be uncontrollable.  I WAS NEAR THE EDGE.  I could not stop myself from the murderous, reckless course I was being forced to take, except by one means.  I de­cided on that course and prepared myself to die at 6 p.m. that afternoon.  Just before the time that I would put the gun to my head, I walked out in the fields to take a last look at the world.  As I was walking, I noticed a lady sitting on the porch of an empty house.  She was there for me, but she thought she was there to welcome a bride and a groom.  I spoke to her briefly and asked if she was a Christian.  She answered in the affirmative.  Then, all the vengeance that was in me broke loose upon her and she began to cry.  In her tears, she said, “I challenge you!”  These three words immediately bound me to a fight.  I could not back off from a challenge.  She said that I should go to my room and tell God that she said He is to save me by the Blood of Jesus Christ.  It seemed all foolishness to me, however, she was deadly serious.  I honestly thought this was some kind of a formula or some type of “abracadabra” (magic word).  However, I was in a condition of being desperate enough to try anything that might work.  I figured that if I said these magical words, something would happen. 

As I was motivated to take up this challenge, I did exactly as she said.  I went home to my room and spoke to God.  First, nothing happened inside of me, but after a few minutes I felt hilarity.  I cannot exactly describe the feeling.  I wanted to laugh.  I resisted this laughter, since it seemed more like madness to me to laugh without any apparent reason.  The thought of madness came to me and even the suggestion that I might have blown my circuits and might well have gone crazy (because I had been such an avid reader and student).  Now I know that was the voice of Satan, but then it seemed quite logical.  Another voice came into my mind and said, “If you think you are demented, then give yourself a sober test.  If you were mad, you would surely naturally tear this room apart.  So, tidy the room and if you are able to do that, then you are not mad.”  I did so.  When the job was completed I set a vase with flowers on the table, stepped back, looked at the room and said, “I am not crazy.”  The moment I accepted the fact that SOMETHING GODLY and supernatural had happened to me, a flood of joy overwhelmed me, and I knew that something from God had somehow entered my being.

The change in my life was so radical that everybody around me immediately saw something wonderful had happened.  There were many of the men whom I worked with on the Government Experimental Farm, Grove Place, Jamaica, who were relieved from terror when I was changed overnight to the love of God.