Today ended up being a difficult day. I came face-to-face with my own mortality not once, but twice in a matter of just a few hours.
The first came during a flight lesson that otherwise went great. While doing a few maneuvers at the practice area, I came out of a turn and saw another plane just below the nose of my plane. Had we not been about 200 feet above them, we very well may have collided. I don’t have much fear in regards to flying, but my greatest fear is mid-air collisions. Other planes can come seemingly out of nowhere leaving very little time to react. Small planes like I fly, a Cessna 172 (Skyhawk), are very difficult to see.
The second brush with death came in a car accident on my way home from my flight lesson. I stopped at the auto parts store to get some anti-freeze to flush my coolant system. As I was pulling out of the parking lot when leaving, I didn’t see a mini-van coming and pulled out. I ended up hitting him on the passenger side. Had I pulled out just a second or two sooner, I could have very easily been T-Boned, and possibly killed as he would have struck me on the driver’s side.
It was very jarring. I’ve been in a few small fender-benders in the past, never my fault, and rear ended a woman while going about 10 mph when she stuttered while making a right turn at a stop light. I’ve never been responsible for this kind of damage.
I thank God that the only way this particular accident could have had a better outcome would have been if it had not happened at all, since neither I nor the other driver sustained any injuries.
I say that this was a broadsided answer to prayer for good reason though. I have been listening to a lot of Ray Comfort’s sermons lately, and have really taken them to heart. In them, he cries out that we, the church, need to ask God to teach us to number our days. It is easy, at 27 years of age, to see so much of my life ahead of me and not take my service to God seriously. I have prayed that He teach me to number my days. I want to live each day as if it could be my last, because one day I’ll be right.
Sometimes God answers prayer in the most unexpected ways. By allowing me to get into an accident that could have had a far worse outcome, I was forced to recognize that youth carries no guarantees. Young people die all the time. I am fully confident that had I been killed in either the car accident or a mid-air collision, I’d be with Jesus right now. In the sense of my eternal position, I have no fear of death. What jarred me most though, was the thought that I could have done so much more for Him in my life so far.
Get out there Christian; use this time you have to snatch sinners from the fires of Hell. So many are headed there, and it’s our job, while we’re here, to point as many to the door of salvation as we can.
Glad you were not hurt