Meditation for the week of September 23, 2007
Proverbs 27:1 Do not boast about tomorrow, For you do not know what a day may bring forth. (NKJV)
Recently, I was sitting quietly in our family room resting up to go to bed. We had the windows open because the night was cool. All of a sudden I heard a thud and then a squeal. Assuming that someone had just experienced a “fender denter†some place near us, I remember thinking that it was odd that I had heard the thud and then the squeal. Usually when there is an automobile accident, you hear the squeal as brakes are set just before impact and then the thud. The other thing that went through my mind was that someone was having a bad day. Then, I heard sirens.
I am not a person who likes to see accidents and since I do not have emergency medical training, I did not go out to see what had happened. The next day we found out that a young man had apparently fallen asleep on the way home and had crossed the center line about a mile from our house. He had hit two motorcycles head on. One of the cycles had a man and his wife on it. They were pronounced dead at the scene. The other cyle had one person on it, and he was left in critical condition. I then understood why I had heard the thud and then the squeal. Since the young man was asleep, the impact likely woke him up, and then he must have locked up his brakes after the impact.
That night two people instantaneously found out that God is real and that physical life is not the end. I hope that they had prepared for the day when they would meet their maker. Two other people involved in the accident suddenly found their lives changed in ways that they never expected. All of them have friends and relatives for whom life will never be the same. I am sure that none of these four had planned to have life turn out the way it did for them that night.
We need to recognize that physical life is fleeting and can be over suddenly. We are thankfully not told when it will be over, but we are told to be ready for the day when it is. In this life, we prepare for medical problems with medical insurance. We buy life insurance to take care of loved ones when we are gone. We buy auto insurance to cover the costs of an accident like this. We buy long-term care insurance in case we end up in a nursing home. But how many of us prepare our souls (the eternal part of us) for the day of our deaths?
The Lord does not offer physical life insurance, but He does offer eternal life assurance. The Lord makes it quite clear that apart from HIs return, we are all going to die. One hundred years from now, nobody reading this meditation will likely still be living. The Bible is says that death has spread to all men because all have sinned (Romans 5:12). Some people have told me that they haven’t sinned, but I know differently. I know that there are times when we all do things that we wish we hadn’t done and there are times when we all don’t do things that we should have done. That we sin is self-evident. That all men die is self-evident. That sin is the cause of death is revealed to us by God in the Bible. The prudent person will recognize that he or she needs to be prepared to meet the One who gives us life and breath and Who has the power to remove life and breath (Proverbs 22:3, 27:12).
A prepared person has agreed with God that they sin. They have agreed with God that sin separates them from God. They understand the need to be saved (Acts 4:12). A prepared person will not trust in something that they do to save them, they will trust in what Christ did to save them. 1 Peter 3:18 says, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.†A prepared person will know that they have eternal life (1 John 5:13).
None of us need to experience an unexpected thud and squeal without knowing that our sins are forgiven. We can all know that we are going to a better place when we die because we are depending on the promise of God that Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
Bruce Collins