A Big Truck and a Brush With Mortality

by Curtis Shelburne

LAST TUESDAY afternoon my youngest son and I came perilously close to becoming a hood ornament for what, from our perspective, was an uncommonly large produce truck. We had stopped at a four-way stop and pulled on into the intersection when I got a fairly sobering view of the truck roaring our way right on through the stop sign!

I hit the accelerator. The other guy hit his brakes. Mine worked. His didn’t. I scooted. He swerved. And we avoided a collision by scant millimeters.

The whole thing left me shaking. Him, too, I think. I know him. He’s a good fellow, and, had he flattened us, I’m sure he would have been genuinely upset. Unfortunately, a nice attitude makes precious little difference bumped up against the laws of physics. His attitude aside, I think that truck could have done a credible job flattening a house, much less a pickup. Joshua and I barely avoided a trip, at best, to the hospital.

Most of us are realistic enough to bow in theory to the 100 per cent statistical probability that we’ll eventually die, at least on some indeterminate date far down the line. We know it will happen. But I’d have been really surprised if it had happened for me on Tuesday. Imagine . . .

“But, Lord, I didn’t deserve to die on Tuesday. His brakes failed! He ran the stop sign!”

“But, Lord, I had columns and sermons to write and folks still to see! My grandkids, for example.”

“But, Lord, gray hairs aside, I’m on the leeward side of forty, far too young for this nonsense!”

“But, Lord . . .”

But what? My protests are interesting but absolutely irrelevant. I’ll betcha they’re also very unoriginal. Think about it.

As a Christian, I firmly believe the world as we know it will end one day when Christ returns. For me and my littlest, it could have ended Tuesday, which reminds me that Jesus’ words are still true: “You must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him” (Matthew 24:44). What is true here for his second coming is also true for our final going! It pays to be ready.

The fact is that one tiny virus of the right—or wrong—sort can do the job just as well as a dump truck. We are all mortal, which means we’d all do well to be ready to make the trip.

In the meantime, let’s be careful out there!