How Quickly Life Can Change
We had one of those real tragic accidents up here in our neck of the woods last weekend. A bus of High School band students returning to western Wisconsin from a competition ran into an overturned, jack-knifed semi at 2:00 in the morning, 30 miles from home. Five people were killed- the band director, his wife, his granddaughter, the bus driver and the student teacher. Many others were hurt, several seriously, including the granddaughter's best friend who was along for the trip.

This has been one of those tragedies that has struck home and really hit me hard for several reasons.

I was coming back from Wisconsin on Sunday and we were detoured off the Interstate- and this was 10 hours after the accident. It is a stretch of highway I know well. It is not some distant location. It is a well-known road for me. That made it a little more immediate. But there is more.

My best friend is a high school band director and my daughter was in the bands. As a result I spent many an hour in the front seat of a tour bus like the one on Sunday as a chaperone for our band. Trips to New York City and Branson, MO from southern Wisconsin made for many miles in that position- the most dangerous place in the bus. As a band geek myself, I know what kind of relationships and feelings come from being part of such a community. I guess I can feel a little bit of their pain.

It is another reminder of the fragility of life. Whether it is something like Hurricane Katrina affecting millions of lives or a bus on a dark Wisconsin highway affecting a city or a nephew with cancer affecting an extended family- life is always on a razor's edge with death. In a moment everything changes. It will never be the same again. Never.

It is but another reminder of taking the moment seriously, of making sure our relationships are in good order, of making darn sure that those we love know it and have heard it from us as often and as deeply as we can say it.

It is but another reminder of taking the love of God just as deeply and seriously. Life is too short to let it slip away without the promises and love that is ours to receive.