Write 31: Crash

{Start.}
  "I was in a wreck today." 
  We were setting up for a baby shower in the church fellowship hall.  Ms. Lucille had said it so calmly.  There she was, walking around, talking, working.  
  "Oh, that's not fun," a friend said as she arranged the chicken salad sandwiches.  It sounded like car crashes were a broken fingernail.  I know she didn't mean it that way, but now as I think back, isn't it amazing?  I mean, there we were standing and doing together, and Ms. Lucille had been in a wreck.  Thankfully, the Lord had protected her and kept her safe, but we passed over the matter so quickly.  Soon we were moving to the pigs in a blanket and setting up the punch table.  
  It's shamefully amazing how easily I overlook the Lord's mercy upon me.  I've sometimes thought as I'm driving, "Wow! That was close!" and yet I and the other people live to see another day and continue on down the highway without saying in humility, "Lord! Thank you for sparing my life, You certainly didn't have to!" 
  I take His goodness so flippantly.  I take it for granted that I will one day get married, have children, become a grandparent, get old and be happy and I don't imagine much (or any) sorrow along the way.    
  That's not the case for countless people in my life that I know and love, though.  They lose a loved one, a job, their house to a fire or hurricane, they suffer financially, they fail to get into the school they've planned to enter since kindergarten. {Stop.}  In those circumstances I say, "Wow, that's too bad"  but I rarely enter into their grief really really.  And I furthermore rarely come humbly before my Lord at times when things could have turned out much worse in my life than they did and say, "Thank You, Father, for Your kindness and mercy."  
  When life crashes or when it almost does, I remain in the Lord's hands.  He is far more worthy of thanks and adoration than I offer to Him.  In reading this morning, I found these verses again, "Lam 3:22 & 23, "It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.  They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness."