Slow Down and Save Your Life

SLOW DOWN, SAVE LIVES

So reads the large, weatherproofed vinyl sign that has been attached to a wall just a hundred yards from our chapel. We are located in Lancastrian arcadia: pretty, rolling hills; quiet, winding lanes; scenic, rustic farms. Sadly, those rolling hills create steep inclines, the winding lanes make blind corners and the rustic farms release plenty of massive tractors. Our area might be pretty, but lives are endangered by traveling these roads. The County Council, perhaps wishing to look proactive, has erected this warning accordingly.

Too often, picturesque places of prettiness and calm are the scenes of tragedy and death. Your lovely warm bed may well be the place of your passing. Or is it that gorgeously decorated front room to be the scene of your demise? At least one preacher entered eternity from our pulpit (1913) and countless others in our manse. Et in Arcadia, ego, admonishes the tomb to the assembled shepherds in Nicolas Poussin's famous 1638 painting: "even in this lovely setting do, I, death, stalk and claim my quarry".

Some lives are too brief, their time cut short. Tragic also is the ignorant bliss of others, who, enjoying this life so well, neglect the eternity to which they are inevitably summoned.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad. II Corinthians 5:21.

From life’s hectic racing and jousting slow down, and ask the Lord Jesus to save your life.