This is a 21st-century story. Before she died, a young woman named Sarah wrote a final message on her iPad and hoped it would one day be read. Barnabas Aid later shared that message exactly as she wrote it; she herself framed it for the public domain. What follows retells only what her words and that page make plain — with short quotations from her message — so her witness, not our invention, may speak.
Sarah grew up hearing of Jesus and going to church. She believed she had made a profession of faith as a child, yet looking back she did not think she had known enough about what she had decided. She was thankful for parents who gave her godly morals — fences that kept her from foolish harm. Still, knowing about God is not the same as walking with Him.
When she turned eighteen, she wanted to break free from what she thought was an oppressive upbringing — to rebel against her parents, her older sisters’ example, and what people expected her to be. She went to university planning, she later wrote, to go as extremely wild as she could.
The first week began. Little sleep. Too much alcohol. Partying. She thought she was loving the new freedom. She scoffed at the wonderful people in her flat who were Christians, because she had developed a loathing toward anything to do with God. She was, in her own words, “literally running in the opposite way from God.”
Then came Friday morning.
Before she even felt hungover or tired, an overwhelming sense of emptiness arrived first. Emptiness is a quiet judgment: it shows that the thing you chased cannot fill you.
In that hour, she later testified, God came to her in great mercy. Not with an audible voice, but in her soul she heard Him lovingly whisper: What are you doing and where are you going? You know what you need, I am here. It is your choice, Sarah.
She cried and cried. She could not believe that He would still want her when she had wanted nothing to do with Him. Yet she was completely convinced that God was real — and here she was, considering a U-turn. That is how Jesus often meets people in our century: not with spectacle, but with a question deeper than argument. I am here. It is your choice.
Sarah’s later life, as her farewell message shows, was marked by suffering. She wrote of cancer and of seizures. She did not pretend that illness was easy, or that pain explained itself. She said one purpose of her illness was to teach her about suffering — and then she pointed away from herself to Christ. No matter how bad it gets, she wrote, it will never compare to the suffering Jesus faced on the cross. Because He suffered, He can identify with those who struggle. So cling to Him. Trust Him. He is in control despite our lack of understanding.
Even while dying, her concern reached beyond comfort for herself — to people who might still roll their eyes at talk of God. She asked them to listen to a departed soul: we are more than flesh; a soul lives on; the question is where. Her confidence did not come from her performance, but from the promises of Jesus — life in all fullness through Him alone, standing in His righteousness and blood, “not anything I have done or not done.”
She wrote with clear joy about what waited beyond death: no pain, no sickness, no hurt — fullness of life with her Creator. To those who knew Jesus she said, do not mourn without hope: “I am free from cancer, free from seizures and more fulfilled and happy than any moment I ever had on earth.” Let her passing strengthen faith that God is real and has a purpose for you. Keep an eternal perspective. Ask how you can bring God more glory.
To those still delaying, she prayed they would open their ears. Do not try to grasp God fully with the mind, she said: He is like the oceans, and the mind is but a teacup. You did not form yourself. Her departing wish was that readers would carefully consider what she had said.
Then she put the gospel in the simplest terms: acceptance into God’s kingdom comes by accepting the gift of Jesus’ blood. “It isn’t about living by a set of rules, it’s about a relationship with my Heavenly Father through the blood of Jesus!”
That is the heart of a 21st-century encounter. A young woman ran. Mercy whispered. She turned. And when cancer came, the same Jesus who met her in emptiness held her to the end — so firmly that her last concern was still for the living, still an invitation.
If you feel emptiness after your own kind of freedom — or hear, beneath the noise, a question that sounds like love — do not shrug it off. Sarah’s story is not a demand that you copy her life. It is a witness that Jesus still speaks, still wants those who have been running, and still leaves the door open: I am here. It is your choice.
Consider Him. Ask Him for mercy. Open a Gospel and read. And if He has already met you, you are welcome to share your story, so that other hearts may hear He is still turning lives toward God.
(Narrated from Sarah’s last message as published by Barnabas Aid: Sarah’s last message to the world. Short quotations above are from her public-domain text as shared there.)