Our community is still reeling from the events of the Christmas Parade last weekend. The following testimony was shared from a friend. It is sensitive, so proceed with caution.
“Tonight, our family was spared as a person drove through the Christmas parade we attended. A police officer had just pushed the crowd back from the road only two minutes before that SUV came plowing through the parade route. According to my son, Luke, who was standing less than two feet from the SUV as it barreled past, that officer saved at least five lives, as well as his own. My heart breaks for the families that weren’t spared; for the bodies we tried to save, but were too late, for the little ones who were injured and crying on their way to the hospital who had been separated from their parents, for the little one who was hit standing right next to Luke. We will never be able to unsee the horrors that happened tonight on that road. The blood, the broken bodies, shoes left from the person that was thrown from them all seared in our brains for the rest of our lives. No one that was at that parade tonight will ever be the same again. Please pray for the lost souls, the injured, the children who witnessed things a child should never see. All of us that stayed to help, and the first responders who were faced with the impossible. Hold your families’ closer tonight. Tell them as often as you can how much you love them. Life can change in an instant.”
We can never know when that moment will hit. I always read about these kinds of things happening in other neighborhoods but not my neighborhood.
In the words of Solomon:
The sun rises and the sun sets and hastening to its place it rises there again. Blowing toward the south, then turning to the north the wind continues swirling along. On its circular courses the wind returns. – Ecclesiastes 1: 5,6
In Waukesha, we wish life hummed along at that steady easy pace, we have all grown so accustomed to. If you put yourself in this passage, how would it read?
The parents rise, he goes to work, earn their incomes, do the laundry, cook, then goes back to their pillows, continuing on their circular courses, round and round they go. Then one day when they least expected it, their lives are forever changed. We get used to the hum drum, and its easy. When something happens like the Waukesha Christmas parade, we are reminded that our time here is fleeting and not guaranteed:
Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. – James 4:14
We get distracted with life, raising the kids, getting a house. Once a man told me he had to replace all the windows in his house, after that he would have time to be a Christian. Why do we put it off? Are we intimidated, procrastinating? What is keeping you from a relationship with God?
Life will come to an end for all of us. One day, we will meet our maker.
Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, calling for you and for me
See on the portals he’s waiting and watching, Watching for you and for me.
Why should we tarry when Jesus is pleading, Pleading for you and for me?
Why should we linger and heed not His mercies, Mercies for you and for me?
Time is now fleeting, the moments are passing, Passing from you and from me
Shadows are gathering, death-beds are coming, Coming for you and for me.
Oh! For the wonderful love He has promised, Promised for you and for me;
Tho we have sinned, He has mercy and pardon, Pardon for you and for me.
We will forgive but never forget.