I was heading from the church to a meeting with Kurt yesterday afternoon just after 3:30pm. Outside the church’s parking lot it was pretty obvious an accident had occurred a few minutes before because cars were stopped all over the place and there were a few cops trying to control traffic. As we pulled up to the stop light near the accident I looked around at the damage of the 2 vehicles. 1 SUV had a badly damaged front and the other car was totaled from the collision on the driver’s side (news article on the accident).
And then both me and Kurt at the same time realized there was a lady in the driver’s seat, and she was dead. She wasn’t covered up because paramedics had not arrived on the scene yet. Our car went silent. We didn’t say a word for a few minutes. Even a day later, I can’t get her face out of my head.
It isn’t everyday in Portland that you see a dead body that was alive only minutes before. It was a swift reminder that my struggles in life are minuscule. It was the fact that I was alive that was the blessing.
Shortly after the accident the police closed off the major intersection and off-ramp where the accident had occurred. And as you can guess, gridlock came quickly since the accident happened right during rush hour traffic. Hours later as I drove home from work there was still gridlock traffic on the highways and back streets.
Amazing how one accident and one taken life can affect so many others, even if only in a small way.
I can’t help but wonder if it is God’s reminder to us that life is fragile and life is interconnected.
We live in our closed-off cars and our fenced-in yards.
But maybe we’re a lot more connected than we think.
After all, our lives are His, not ours.