EVEN IN LIFE WE ARE IN DEATH

When you bicycle long-distance, eventually you'll notice them.  A white cross here, a couple of days later another one there. Simple white crosses stand as sentries at the side of our roads to tell a story.  Roadside deaths are especially heartbreaking----a drunken driver hits your loved one, a texting tragedy, a forgotten signal, too fast, too much testosterone, or just plain horsing around. But in the end these tragedies sit beside the road silently proclaiming a story of how fragile life really is.

Today I passed three markers all along a busy highway.  Grant was only 16 and when he died.  He'd probably jumped on his bike for a quick ride just north of Tucson, never dreaming that he would not return to his family.  Now his bike stands next to the road white like an angel.  A jar sits next to the flowers around his bike with a letter in it.

Jim was sixty-five when his fateful day arrived.   His bike, too, is painted in an eerie flat white hue.  He too marks the road--he was a bicyclist, he lived, loved, breathed, but the bike became his last companion.

But the most touching moment for me came at a quiet roadside under a shaded tree. A single tiny Christmas stocking hangs at an odd angle on a corner of the  white iron cross that sits over a bricked square, presumably where the child sleeps.  The child's cross faces the Angel of the Desert--the San Xavier Mission Church.

These roadside white markers remind us how precious life is and how fragile life can be.  As a bicyclist, I am always aware of the road--is the driver racing up behind me texting?  Veering toward the shoulder?  Do I need to ditch? Yet in that gossamer, flimsy line between life and death I have learned to put my trust in God.  If I am convinced of God and his larger vision that supercedes even life itself, then I can ride across the country in a confidence that more is riding on my life than this fragile life or in being just another roadside marker.  You minimize risk, but you become free of white-knuckling it through life, too afraid to risk or dare.

So next time you pass one of those white crosses or see the flowers and letters banking a roadside ending,  remember the fine line that separates us from two worlds But also remember  that there is One who loves you beyond the moon and back with
a love that won't let you go--even when a roadside marker stands as your silent
sentry.



http://tinyurl.com/border2border2015

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