This morning on my way to school, I came very close to a being in a car crash that likely would have resulted in terrible injury, if not the meeting of my Maker. I was driving along the highway, the way I normally do, and have done a hundred times. I still can't believe how fast it happened. I looked down just for a moment, very quickly, just long enough to see if my hand was in the right place to turn off the air conditioning. It was one of those glances where you look down and up so fast that your eyes never seem to stop moving... but it was just enough time, for a mistake to happen. I had been close to the car in front of me, and there was a car close behind me: just a few feet in between each one. When I looked down the car in front of me was accelerating; when I looked up it was going zero, and I was still going 45.
They say life flashes before your eyes in instances like that. I don't know if that's true, but I know time does. You realize the shortness of everything around you.
It was at that moment I was very grateful for the sensitivity of the breaks in my new car. It has the ability to stop in an instant with only a minor touch, but even with that ability there wasn't enough time. I was inches from the car in front of me, and even if I manged to stop without hitting them, the car behind me would slam into both of us. So I did the only thing I knew to do with less than 1/2 a second to think: I hit my breaks, and pulled off to the left into the empty median.... It worked. The car behind me was able to come to a safe stop, and I made it through alright too. I sat for a moment. Stunned. Scared. (Talk about adrenaline.) They waited for me to pull back into the lane; I did, and continued the last few miles to the school.
I'm not sure how my brain, or my reflexes, or anything else worked so quickly. I know they couldn't have on their own. I had less than a second to asses and analyze the situation, and execute any action, let alone a safe one or one that would work.
Things happen so fast. You can't afford to look away for a moment.
All of life is rather like that. We are just living in a moment, a fraction of an instant on the scale of eternity. We can't let life pass us by and miss opportunities we have to be witnesses for Christ, show his love, notice someone who needs it. We have to take each moment as it comes, and forget planning. Our plans are not the ones we follow. And we have to remember that it's not us that makes surviving, living, and/or witnessing possible, but Christ, Jesus, who lives in us.
Be a blessing to someone today; every day: knowing that this life won't last long. It flashes before our eyes, and our chances will soon run out.
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