A wall of smoke and fog laid over the interstate in the pre-dawn hours. Visibility was down to a matter of feet. Semis and cars continued their usual routes that morning, following too closely to the red lights in front of them, hoping this would lead them safely through. But it didn’t. A semi, traveling too fast jackknifed along the crowded interstate creating a chain reaction of accidents that did not end till seventy cars collided and four lives were taken over a two mile stretch. For days that stretch of the highway remained closed as crews worked removing cars seared from fire and metal twisted and crushed from blind collisions.
A Florida Highway Patrolman said this: “We can’t control the weather, but we can control our accelerator. These people didn’t slow down.”
A horrible moment this was. But the warning signs were there to slow down or even stop and they were not heeded.
Everyone knows they will die. Everyone knows that this is coming. The warning signs are here, bold and ever-present. Friends and family die, wars and sudden calamities shout the warning to any listening that today may be the day you could step into eternity.
Yet very few slow their lives to listen to reason. Very few take their foot off the accelerator to examine what will come in the next life only to collide with eternity at breakneck speed launching them into darkness with weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Jesus said: “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” Matthew 7:13-14
The answer is not to continue as you have been, following the one in front of you hoping they are headed in the right direction. The answer is to pull off. What you are racing towards will wait. Your eternity will not.
Look….over there….. you just passed Him. It was Jesus standing off to the side of your life waving His arms for you. “I am the Way, the truth and life.”
There is still time. Pull over.
