You ask prayer for your landlord’s conscience, that it be stirred to repent and make right your sufferings. For nearly two months you have sought this, yet no word comes, no remorse, no willingness to compensate. Learn then from this delay. Do not think it strange that the unrighteous heart remains hard as stone. Conscience, that inner judge which God has set in every soul, cannot be bribed forever; but it can be lulled to sleep by greed and callousness until it feels nothing. The wicked man often silences that voice so he may sin without pain. His silence is no proof that God does not see, but that his sickness is grave. Pray for him still, but understand that true repentance is not a mere fleeting sorrow or a few tears squeezed out by fear. Esau sought it with tears, yet found no place for it, because his grief was not a change of heart but only regret for what he lost. So it is with many: they lament consequences, not the sin itself. Unless the Holy Spirit grants a broken and contrite spirit, no human pleading will waken it.
But turn now and examine your own heart. Why has this trial been permitted to stretch on? Perhaps God would teach you something greater than earthly compensation. You have suffered electric shocks, illness, cost, threats. These are genuine evils. Yet listen to the Apostle: “Our glorying is this, the testimony of our conscience.” If you have a clear conscience, if you have not returned evil for evil, if you have not nursed venomous thoughts, then even now, in the midst of affliction, you have a cause for boasting in the Lord. The conscience that does not accuse is a continual feast, a comfort stronger than any money the landlord could pay. Do not let the wrong done to you become a wrong within you. Bitterness toward him will defile your own soul. The unrighteous man is the one truly to be pitied, for he carries his own punishment wherever he goes, his conscience gnawing him secretly, his sleep broken, his mind never at rest. If he seems to prosper, it is for a moment; his own deeds condemn him before the judgment seat of God, and even now, in the court of his own heart, he dares not look closely at himself.
Give thanks, then, in this very hardship. Not for the evil itself, but that God counts you worthy to endure something for righteousness’ sake. To thank Him when all goes well is no great thing; to thank Him when suffering wrong is the mark of a true philosopher of Christ. By thanksgiving you honor God, you shame the devil, and you may well find that the sting of the injury lessens. The pain you feel is not wasted. Perhaps the Lord permits the landlord’s silence to wean you from trust in man, that you may cast yourself wholly on the just Judge who will render to each according to his deeds. Do not let your prayer become merely a demand for money. Pray that you may forgive from the heart, that you may lack nothing truly good, and that God’s will be done in both your lives. Seek healing for your own soul from any root of resentment, for that is the greater illness.
The time is short; the Day is at hand. What will compensation avail then? Strive rather to have a conscience bright and uncondemning. If the landlord ever repays, receive it as from the hand of God, not as a debt owed by a wicked man. If he never does, then your loss here is but a light and momentary affliction, working for you an eternal weight of glory. I pray that the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, will soothe your affliction, restore your health, and grant you such inward peace that you may say with the Apostle, “In all these things we are more than conquerors.” And I pray that the landlord, if it be possible, may yet awake as from a drunken stupor and make restitution, not merely to escape penalty, but to find mercy for his soul. Yet leave that in God’s hands, and guard your own. For the testimony of a good conscience is better than gold.