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Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Witness

Memories not evoked for years seemingly appear out of nowhere. When I was a boy, if we wanted to get into town from our suburban home, we had to cross railroad tracks that constituted the major transportation hub that was in North Bay, Ontario at the time. There were multiple train tracks to cross and it was routine to sit in the car for ten or fifteen minutes while the trains shuttled back and forth. There is now a major overpass built when I was a young adult over the whole of the crossing. That particular location is on my mind this morning. Until I was about ten years old, most of the engines working at that crossing were driven by steam. I well remember the black smoke bellowing from the large smokestacks and the characteristic sounds made by steam engines for over a century.

By the time I was old enough to get a driver’s licence, the use of diesel engines had taken over. My memory of that crossing and what was to transpire on one particular late afternoon is very vivid. I had walked from school to where my father worked in order to get a ride home. I was allowed to become a licensed driver shortly after my sixteenth birthday, but I was not allowed to drive the car without the presence of my father or my mother until I was seventeen years old. I realize now, of course, the wisdom of such a parental edict. As we approached the railway crossing there was a long line up of vehicles waiting for the shuttling trains. We settled in for a long wait.

As the signal lights and bells ceased, we were shocked to see a car that had been on the other side of the tracks careening out of control over the crossing. As was revealed to us later, the driver of the car had hit the gas pedal instead of the brake and had panicked with her right foot in that very position. It was a surreal scene as she continued to drive at a frightening speed at right angles to the line up of vehicles in front of us, hit two cars shoving them violently aside and then turning in the nearby field to return again and hit two more cars. She hit us hard on the rear passenger wheel and fender sending our car a full 360 degrees around and up the street thirty or forty feet. The panicked driver finally came to a violent rest under the porch of a house across the street. Pandemonium reigned as everyone got out of their vehicles to check for injuries of which there were miraculously none. It occurred to me as I sat in that damaged car in shock that if she had hit the passenger front door, my father may have been killed. Thankfully my father had just installed lap seat belts in that white 1962 Pontiac. Seat belts were not factory installed in those days and indeed were rarely actually worn. We had both buckled our belts as we embarked.

As the police were making their exhaustive multi-paged accident report, something else occurred to me. My father had warned me the day I got my driver’s license that one accident would be enough to end my driving career. I knew he meant it. I was very relieved that he was an eye witness to the accident. Beyond a shadow of a doubt he knew that I was absolutely not at any fault in any way. I would live to drive another day. In 1Peter 5:1 we read of another witness of what happened to an absolutely innocent man.

1 ¶ The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and also a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed:

We know from the writings of others in the gospel books that Peter was a major witness to the sufferings of Christ. I am comforted by his own assertion that he was indeed a witness. I live by faith, but I am delighted to be reminded of the actual historical references to the life and suffering of Jesus Christ. Peter was an eye witness to the suffering and death that resulted in my redemption. He was there when I was redeemed and he has reported such to me. Like Peter, as a believer, I am also a partaker of the glory that is yet to be. As we are also reminded in Colossians 3: 4, when Jesus, who is our very life, returns, we will appear with Him in Glory. What a day that will be!

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