Opinion

One good turn ...

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

My father-in-law, Archie, was still a young man when he died, leaving behind his wife, already widowed when I first met her, three daughters, two grandchildren and a 12-year-old son who would cross the threshold of manhood four months later, bereft of his father's love.

Archie could not, or would not, be convinced of the wisdom of using his seat belts. Perhaps his numerous years on the highways and byways of America had taught him to be wary of being trapped in flames or submerged in a deep and dangerous river. (Yes, fellow Southwest Nebraskans, there are indeed rivers so wide and so deep -- so quickly running with water that they can swallow an 18-wheeler whole.)

I suppose it is possible that over-confidence could have been his undoing. After all, he spent years adroitly ferrying entire households, in fact multiple households, in a gleaming green and white tractor trailer through congested city streets and over desolate mountain passes in the deep of winter.

He was, by all accounts, an extremely safe driver, once ditching his rig to avoid a collision with a station wagon filled with children. And Bekin Van Lines, the company he contracted through, awarded him the much coveted title "Driver of the Year."

Whatever his justification for not wearing his seat belt, there came the day when that failure would become the predominant factor in his death on a lonely stretch of an Arizona highway. Just as daylight gave way to twilight, he encountered a cow and jackknifed his rig. He was thrown free of the truck which, continuing down the highway unchecked, rolled over him, taking him prematurely from those who loved him.

We are all, at any moment of any day, at similar risk.

Oh, perhaps it won't be as dramatic as Archie's demise. It may be as simple as a blood vessel in the brain, weakened over time, finally bursting through the thin wall and we are no more.

And sometimes, no matter how carefully we monitor our diet, no matter how diligently we exercise or in spite of how vigilantly we guard our bodies from known carcinogens, one day, unseen and unknown to us, a cell mutates. Sometimes, in spite of using every available assault weapon available in the impressive arsenal of modern medicine, that one mutated cell brings an invasive enemy that is, in the end, victorious.

We are all, always, one step away from death.

And, we are all, always, one step away from life.

From birth and before, death dogs us. So, too, does God. The apostle Paul spoke to God's nearness when addressing the men of Athens, explaining, " ... and he determined the times set for them ... God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." (Acts 17:26, 27)

No matter how far afield we have traveled from God -- no matter how dark with sin our souls have become, no matter the crime committed -- be it thievery, murder or the destruction of innocent souls through abuse or neglect -- God remains but one step, one turn, one breath, away. Whether we make that turn at 10, or 20, 50 or 80, God "is not far from each one of us."

And it is in that turning that we discover life and that more abundant. And death, though it will still one day find us, loses in that instant, its terrifying power to destroy.

"If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." Romans 10:9 (NIV)

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