yesterday i drove home to north carolina. the plan was to come home for a day or so, see the family and the girl, head to tennessee on the weekend, and then head back to lynchburg for my last week or two of work. as with many of the times i’ve told you about my drive home, it was a nice day, i had the music turned up, and i decided to take the back roads.

at the particular part of the drive that made me think to write this, i had just gotten off the highway in gretna, virginia. i was on a little two lane road (40) in between gretna and smith mountain lake. this is an area that’s pretty straight, has a 55 mile per hour speed limit, and is about as easy as a road can be to drive. there i am, driving along, listening to music and doing whatever it is i do while i drive. the next thing i know, i look in my rearview mirror and there’s an ambulance with its lights and siren on.

whoa, where’d that come from?

how long has he been there?

crap, i need to slow down and pull over.

after i let the ambulance get around me, i watched as it drove up on the people in front of me and did the same thing. it took them a second to realize it was there. it even took a few seconds for some to notice it.

there was someone in the back of that ambulance. i don’t know what happened to that person. i don’t know if it’s a seven-year-old that fell on the playground or a 67 year-old having a heart attack. all i know is that someone was in there and something was going on with them.

and there’s a chance that they were dying.

and it took me a minute to notice.

i think this happens a lot. we go through our lives doing our things and concentrating on our stuff without realizing that the people around us are dying. maybe they’re not dying physically but emotionally or spiritually they’re barely hanging on. they’re searching for answers about something or they’re trying to figure out how the heck to deal with this other thing.

and we don’t even notice.

we get caught up in our lives and our problems and our issues that we don’t notice the people around us. this jesus thing isn’t about us. one of the things that hit home with me in my quiet time recently is that we are supposed to help those around us that maybe don’t have all the answer or who are struggling with things.

we can’t let them just die without noticing.

we have to notice.

we have to help.

say your prayers and take your vitamins.

have a nice day.

-jonathan