Living to Glorify Another Day…
A few months ago, a guest speaker in my church opened his message by saying, “I’m glad to be with you this morning; in fact, at my age, I’m glad to be anywhere!” This greeting predictably prompted laughter and sympathetic nods from the “graying” congregation. Even though I still have a few stray strands of dark hair left, I, too, strongly identified all too well with his comical statement. While the major points of his sermon have long escaped my memory (blame it on age), these few words continue to run through my mind. I guess it’s because they hit, oh, so close to home.
I can be sitting in my office at the IMB, get up to go to the computer printer, and before I’ve taken 5 steps, find myself heading off in another direction, return to my desk and wonder where the printed document is. Right turns instead of left ones on well-worn paths I’ve traveled are becoming more and more the norm. Yep, with my memory, “I’m glad to be anywhere.” But on a much deeper level, I’m truly glad to be anywhere. And, that is one of the things for which I’m so very thankful this Thanksgiving season. I’m simply thankful to be alive. I guess it’s quite normal to feel this way the older one becomes. With each passing year, an increasing number of people within my circle of friends and family pass away.
So far, I’ve been blessed with excellent health and with relatively few accidents, most of those while hunched over handlebars when out on training rides. The worst one occurred during the years I lived in France. I had just entered Bordeaux’s city limits and was barreling down a busy city street when the next thing I knew I was regaining consciousness on a hospital bed. Later, with the help of my horseback riding instructor and my wife, I was able to reconstruct what happened that afternoon.
Immediately after topping a hill, ducking my head and peddling rapidly down the road, I barreled into the rear of a city bus, which had just stopped to unload passengers. I picked myself up off the pavement, lifted my mangled racing bike onto my shoulder and stumbled a half-mile down the road to the Centre Hippique, where I used my riding instructor’s telephone to call my wife Debbie. While waiting for her to come pick me up, I described my accident to the instructor. To this day, I don’t remember any of that! At any rate, when Debbie and my daughter Jennifer arrived, I hoisted the bike onto the top of the car, locked it in place and fell into the right front seat. After the second or third time I had asked my wife the same question—“Whose leading tonight’s Bible study?—she deduced that something wasn’t quite right with me. Instead of stopping at our house on Rue Marceau, she kept right on going another 200 yards up the street to the Hospital Pellegrin. At some point along the way, I passed out completely.
Was I wearing a helmet? Nope! During the days before Greg Lemon and Lance Armstrong, all true cyclers wore flimsy “painter caps.” Rest assured that even before we coasted down the street from the hospital to our house, we drove straight to a cycling shop and bought what was by today’s standards an extremely antiquated egg-shaped helmet. Now I know just how football players feel when they’ve had their bell rung. They may walk around on the sideline, look someone in the eye and talk to them, but they could very well be in another world—in a very critical state of being. Most live to play another day; a few succumb to their injury. As for me, I obviously lived and continue to play many more days, but, just as easily, I could have died right then and there, behind a bus on Cours de la Liberation.
Yes, Lord, I’m very thankful for the gift of my life. I sincerely pray that You are glorified by what is left of it.
And, Father, I’m also very thankful for my family, especially for little Will’s safe arrival. May Your blessings be upon us all during this coming year…
