The Last Leaf by O...
Illustration
"The Last Leaf" by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) tells of two women in a Greenwich Village flat and their neighbor, an aging artist named Behrman, who dreams of painting a masterpiece. When one of the women is stricken with pneumonia, she ties her fate to a leaf of ivy visible through the window from her bed. "When the last one goes, I must go, too," she says. But the leaf hangs and she recovers. Only after she has regained her health does she learn that Behrman has painted the leaf, his masterpiece, on the wall facing her window, and that he succumbed to pneumonia from the effort. But her hope in the leaf helped her survive. Our hope for survival is in Christ. He has no illusion or imitation, but is the real God-man who died on Calvary's cross to rise again victorious over death and the grave. His resurrection is proof enough that we can trust in him to rise again also and live forever.
-- Guettler
-- Guettler
