Guilty Thanks

Yesterday, driving the interstate a few car lengths ahead, the black pick up truck must have slid on some ice at the other end of the bridge.  I watched in horror as it slapped into a right angle to the road even as my foot went to the brake as my mind screamed don’t brake!  Do not brake!  at the same time it is responding if you don’t you’ll hit him!

These things happen so fast you can’t know for sure – but I think it was more the car’s abilities and technologies than my own that stopped our own slip into skid, but the pick-up truck was not so fortunate.

For a brief instant I thought all would be well as the truck simply faced into the median, but inertia had other plans and the truck propelled into the median, which has a steep middle.  The truck flipped onto its top and into the opposite lanes.

The driver (we think his name is Gary) was thrown from the truck onto the roadway.  He was alive at the scene as best we could tell, but his injuries were severe.  His mother managed to crawl out from under the smashed top.  She didn’t seem to be hurt, but she was in shock, so it’s difficult to know.

Several folk, we among them, stopped to render aid and as is so often the case, some who stopped were people with the needed skills – a fireman, a nurse, and others.  Cell phones become the blessing of the moment as people are able to call quickly for help.  All I managed to do was to silently pray, which is not nothing, but feels at the time so little.

Often have I heard folk speak about those who slow down passing an accident with scorn.  But I think it’s nothing nefarious or nasty.  I think they’re slowing down to make sure there’s help.  And to say a small, whispered, just-a-little-guilty thanks that it wasn’t them, for how easily it could have been.

We’re praying for Gary and his mother this Thanksgiving Day as we hope to hear news of whether he survived.  We’re saying our own (guilty) thanks that it wasn’t us this time.  And we’re giving thanks for firemen and nurses and random folks with tools in their trucks ready to be used to help at a moment’s notice when a stranger lies on the pavement fighting to live when, just moments before, whatever life he led was heading down the highway blissfully unaware of what was to come.

Life is so tenuous as well as so precious, with each moment offering no guarantees of another.  And so it is, for all the moments that have passed, I give thanks.

Not Much Else

Yesterday morning was largely spent blogging about drones and our failure to examine the wisdom of a policy of killing people termed enemies from afar.  It was a computer morning, with lots of research at my fingertips.

The afternoon, by contrast, was person-to-person: dropping off some food and visiting with an older couple then visiting with a family saying good-bye to a beloved dear one in the end stage of life – a life too soon taken by the vagaries and injustice of cancer.

All politics may be local, but all grief is global – none escape it.

And what occurs to me in reflecting on my day spent amidst so much grief and pain is that life itself brings so much challenge, so many tears, that I wonder that we would add to the mix with our own contribution to the grief of self and others.

Before going to seminary, a preacher I know would often say to my many questions, “It’s not a salvation issue and God will take care of it.”

She frustrated the nonsense out of me at the time, but I have grown to new appreciation of that wisdom.  So much I fret about resides in the hands of God.  So often when I want to get something ‘right’, it’s about telling another that they’re wrong.  So often when I want to ‘know’ for sure, what I really want is reassurance that in the court of public opinion, I am the winner.  So often what I worry about doesn’t matter at all.

Sitting with the dying and their loved ones reminds me of that: most of what I sweat day-to-day really doesn’t matter at all.  And God will take care.  So what does God need of me?  My helping hands, and, I suspect, not much else.