Chaplains Corner: Near miss makes you think

My wife had a near miss recently. She was out driving when suddenly the back doors of the van in front came open. She watched in horror as a large tractor size wheel fell out on the road. Incredibly the wheel did not bounce but stood still and stayed on the road where it landed. She was able to brake and manoeuvre around the wheel and keep on driving. My wife was a bit shaken up but thankful that it hadn’t been a nasty accident.

Near misses, have you ever had one? If you have, do you ever wonder, ‘What if that situation I went through had played out differently? “What if I had been a few minutes earlier or perhaps in a different location at that time, what would have happened?

It would be easy to say I’m not going to think about it. I used to do that but then I would get anxious pondering the many ‘what-ifs’ of life. I’ve found believing in God has made a big difference to how I see my life and I don’t worry about the ‘what-ifs’ anymore.

The near miss has reminded me that we are such fragile creatures. It is so easy to think we can go on forever and forget our lives can be so easily upset. In Psalm 103, “The life of mortals is like grass, they flourish like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more”. Before this line of thought tumbles us into a pit of despair, the psalm continues with “But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him”. There is always hope and the Bible is above all else a book of hope.

The Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke about and was a herald for is not a a place we have to travel to or visit, rather it is something to do with our hearts, it is about trust and relationship with God.

I’ve come to realise God wants us to give our ‘what-ifs” to him. King David when facing uncertainty and confronted with threat to his life wrote that “our times are in God’s hands”. The near misses of life are out of our hands but are not left to chance. No freak event is out of God’s control. Our security comes not through our efforts to control life. God has a plan. Jesus said, “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today”. We can only do that if we are trusting in our Heavenly Father and finding refuge in his “everlasting arms”.