Unpardonable Sin?

I suppose this is a strange thing to think about on a cross-country flight, but I have already done a crossword puzzle, 3 Sudokus, the Mensa quiz in the airline magazine, and have read some articles in said magazine, eaten lunch, and napped.

So…here is what I am pondering.  Is it possible to reject the voice of the Holy Spirit and God’s urging toward repentance and salvation so many times that one becomes incapable of accepting Christ as Savior?

The Bible is full of assurances that God loves us and wants us to come to repentance.  There is a parable which indicates that even coming to him at the last minute after a wasted life gets one into heaven, but could the barrier be within ones self?

My father told me a story, told him by his mother.  I don’t know how accurately it was related, and if I am remembering it exactly as I was told.

My grandmother was raised on a farm in Kitchener, Ontario.  Her mother died when she was a young girl leaving the children to be raised by her husband Valentine Maul, who was apparently an unpleasant man.  Her childhood was difficult, filled with manual labor and harsh punishment.  When Grandma and her sister were in their late teens, they left home and set out by themselves for Buffalo, New York, where they found work as seamstresses in a company that made men’s suits.  My grandmother actually became a tailor.

I don’t know how long after that, they heard that their father was dying, and took a train back to the town in Canada where their father was living.  On arriving, they did not know where he was staying, and went into a local business to see if by chance, he was known in the town. 

“Oh, yes,” was the answer.  “Everyone in town knows where he is.  He has been screaming for days that he is dying and going to hell.  He says he has rejected God so many times that now he can’t accept him.”

My grandmother died when I was thirteen, and this is not the kind of story one would tell a child, so I never heard it firsthand.  I would have liked to know if Grandma and her sister were able to offer any comfort, if they were able to assure him of God’s forgiveness, if he would only repent.  I don’t know the answers to those questions.

No one can know for sure what is in another’s heart.  But, I know people who have heard the message of Christ’s love and forgiveness many, many times and turned a deaf ear.  Does the Holy Spirit ever give up on someone?  Is it possible to so harden ones own heart that there is no inclination toward God, no realization of ones need, no ability to swallow ones pride?  Is that the unpardonable sin?

I pray for the Holy Spirit to keep pestering those I love until they can no longer resist.  I pray that they never get to the point my great-grandfather apparently reached.