In Just A Minute

This has been sitting in my Edit file for two years. I just happen to see it there today. It's a bit melodramatic, but it was written in good intentions. 

People say that life can change in an instant. If you've ever heard the sound of your first child crying the moment it entered this bright and noisy world, you know this to be true. If you've ever spent half your life searching for that one true love only to see her across the room as if by accident, you understand how quickly circumstances can change. Maybe you woke up one morning to find life has dealt you another hand; I suppose tragedy happens just as quickly as triumph. Suddenly you are swept away in an avalanche of sadness struggling to swim to the surface, to catch a quick breath before you are pulled under again. One moment you are bored by the mundane rituals of the world, seconds later you stand begging for life to be stale once again. It's in these times when you find yourself spun around looking at what just happened and thanking God for watching over you. With that in mind I bring this week's article.

His name isn't as important as what happened to him on that dark stretch of interstate I65 South. I say that with a grain of salt of course. I'm sure his name meant something to somebody. He was most certainly a son to a caring mother, possibly a father to a young innocent child. No doubt he was loved by God regardless of whether he understood that himself or not. I pray he'd spent a portion of his life in the arms of somebody that loved him deeply. That he knew God and His power to grant everlasting life. I wonder if he knows of the hours my family has spent thinking about his these past couple of weeks. 

It'd been a terribly long day spent helping my grandparents move, driving hours on end with two very loud boys, and the last thing any of us wanted was to be stuck in a traffic jam for an hour & a half at 8:30 on a Saturday night. Understandably at first we weren't interested in anything but getting home. Mistakenly certain that what lay just around the next corner was nothing more than a simple fender bender that in turn had been exasperated by slow moving police. As the minutes began to accumulate though we began to understand something very tragic had occurred up ahead. 

Even a week later the details are sparse. This stranger to me...this unknown motorist somehow found himself on the side of the road and in search of help. Whether by being involved in a minor car accident or engine trouble, the end result was the same...he was alone on a particularly dark section of the interstate and needed help. What happened next is too graphic for this venue, but simply put the stranded motorist ended his time on this earth while attempting to cross traffic that did not see him coming. Such a sad way to go...such a tragic way to leave this world behind.

The more we began to learn of what caused the delay in our return trip home, the more we began to imagine what might have been that night. What had put him at that place at that time? What minor adjustments of time could have prevented his death? What if it had been us that had caused his end had we not stopped at one more store or picked a slower restaurant? What would life have been like for everyone had things just not gone the way they did on that lonely stretch of I65? 

God has a plan. For this you can be certain. We may struggle with the situations we find ourselves in, but a plan exists never the less. The future is a frightening concept full of all sorts of nightmares and goblins and as scary as tomorrow might be, I can't think of anything more terrifying than facing it without God....without knowing the love of Jesus Christ. I used to think that someday I would get baptized when I was ready, I'm so very thankful God gave me the chance to live that long. I pray this man knew God, that his family has found peace in knowing he's now in The Saviors arms, and that they have found a way to live for today rather than wait for tomorrow.

Bill Beck iii