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1In the trenches of World War I, an injured soldier was dying. Bert had been caught in an explosion and was bleeding heavily. Tiny Jim (the biggest man in the trench) tried to help Bert up, but it soon became clear he didn’t have long left to live. So Tiny Jim laid Bert down on an old coat at the bottom of the trench.

Jim went back to his firing position. He hadn’t been there long when he heard a weak voice calling to him, saying, “Can you tell me the way to heaven?”

Tiny Jim jumped down again to Bert. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t know. But I’ll ask the lads.”

Returning to his post, Jim asked the man next to him, “Do you know the way to heaven?” But that soldier didn’t know either. Bert’s question was passed along each of the soldiers manning the trench. No one seemed to have an answer.

They could have guessed. They could have made something up. They could have told Bert it was all going to be fine, just to calm him down. But these soldiers had fought together and looked after each other. They cared too much about Bert to just leave him to ‘hope for the best’. They knew that this dying man, who had only minutes left to live, needed the real thing.

Eventually the question reached a soldier quite far down the trench: “Bert is dying and wants to know the way to heaven. Can you tell him?”

The soldier nodded, “Yes, I know the way to heaven. But I can’t leave my position.” He got a little Bible out of his pocket and opened it up. “Here, read the verse I’ve marked. That’s the way to heaven.”

The Bible was passed all the way back along the trench to Tiny Jim and Bert. Jim knelt down and read out the sentence in the Bible that had been underlined:

“For God so loved the world that he gave [Jesus] his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” —John 3:16

There was finally a look of calm on Bert’s face as he whispered: “whoever”. When he died moments later, he did so peacefully. He knew he was going to be with Jesus in heaven.

No matter who we are or how we have lived, there is only one thing needed to enter heaven: belief in Jesus. Bert only decided to trust Jesus in the last seconds of his life. But it was enough. When Jesus promised that “whoever” can be saved by him, He really did mean anyone can go to heaven.

When we trust him, he forgives us for anything we have done wrong. He also makes us part of God’s family straight away. And he will welcome us into heaven when we die. We just have to trust him.

— Mark, an Our Daily Bread reader

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