Sept 26th, 2020: Take Nothing and No one for Granted
We had a rather unsettling experience this week. A truck full of explosives rear-ended our daughter's car on her way to work in Victoria, BC. The appropriate authority is now investigating the accident. I didn't really feel anything until I hang up the phone because I wanted to be sure that she was ok. She is sore and was able to talk to a physician virtually late Thursday. Things could be a lot worse if the truck driver lost control of his vehicle more than he did.
We are reminded once more that we cannot take anything for granted. Life can have a sudden change, and none of us is fully prepared for it. It was just good to hear my daughter's voice. It is no longer about having control. It is about receiving a gift.
It might not be a bad idea to re-examine our life priorities and see how we have taken people in our life for granted. The first thing I did after that phone call was to call my other two kids just to be sure that they are safe. It was not logical, and yet it seemed to be the right thing to do. They were a bit baffled by their old man's call. But that was not the first time.
It might be helpful that we bring to God all of our unresolved issues if we can know them that well. Sometimes it is healthier to engage God in the art of living by allowing Him to show us how to depart from this world well. I have seen people who cannot do that and died with an angry heart. I know that it sounds morbid, but the line between life and death is more fragile than we can anticipate.
Resentment is one of them. It is one of the most painful issues of the human heart. We are too easily offended because people happen not to agree with us. I have known people who are still angry at their parents for something they did or say many years ago. The parents already died, and yet they still encounter their own resentment. That is when the dead control the living.
Somehow COVID 19 is just another human predicament as I go through what might happen in that accident. Many people are dying today because of many other forms of illness and accidents. The grief that their family has to experience is the same grief that families of COVID 19 casualties have to encounter. Yesterday I received the news from a friend that his sister's pastor and wife died suddenly in a car accident. They left behind three young children. We don't understand human suffering, and yet we are not supposed to be indifferent toward it either. So please pray for the family of this pastor and his wife.
Let us begin this day with a thankful heart. Let us wait and see what God has to teach our hearts at that very moment. Maybe we learn how to embrace death to ourselves as access to life then.
Romans 8: 38-39
"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
