A Knock On the Door

HT Ray Ortland

“De verboden Lectuur” by Karel Ooms (1876) portrays a Belgian man studying the Bible with his daughter in a time of persecution. They are breaking the law, and they know it. They have just heard a knock on the door.

This painting hung along a stairway in the Belgian Gospel Mission when my family visited there in 1959. Even as a boy, I sensed how solemn and beautiful it was. Somehow the family got hold of a print, and somehow the print ended up in my possession. It hangs in our study here at home. It is beside me now.

May I be a man of the Bible. May I be a faithful father. May I be a loyal Christian, whoever knocks on the door.