Three fire trucks, five cop cars, and three ambulances. Onlookers lined both sides of the road. Policemen unrolled yellow tape and erected orange barrel barricades to keep the onlookers at a distance. Still, the number of onlookers grew. Huddles of Latino families lined both sides of the four-lane road. EMTs and paramedics loaded what appeared to be two bodies on gurneys into one of the ambulances. Blue lights from the police cars, and red lights from the fire trucks and ambulances, lit the onlookers’ faces. The facades of business buildings facing the road reflected lights from emergency vehicles. The rain had just stopped. Wisps of steam rose from the hot wet asphalt. Shattered glass.

One of the vehicles was a four-door Ford Lincoln from the early 1980s, a massive car by today’s standards. It was now in two pieces. The vehicle that had T-boned the Lincoln was unrecognizable. It was now smashed into what resembled a steel accordion. I could have fit it in the back of my pickup. It sat immobilized in the center of the four-lane. Steel, plastic, and fiberglass bent in upon itself in horrific shapes. The Lincoln was in two pieces. The front half was in the middle turn lane. The rear half was downhill about a hundred meters, steaming on the sidewalk. It had been cut in half from the impact.

I’d come upon this scene on my drive to Publix. I was on my way to purchase sandwich meat and bananas. But as I topped the hill, I instead encountered this. Lights from ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars that that had amassed over half a block of South Cobb Drive. We drivers who’d come upon the scene were being rerouted, as South Cobb Drive was now closed. But the crowd of people grew. They gathered on foot along the four-lane. To do what? To pray for the families of the dead? To offer help to the EMTs, policemen, and firefighters? To gaze, like vultures on a wire, upon human carnage?

My stomach began to hurt. I realized I’d lost my appetite. I’d been looking forward to a turkey sandwich and banana after my run. Now I felt sick and ashamed of my selfishness. James’ words flashed in my mind: “yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14 ESV).

I watched the red brake lights of the car in front of me, as we inched our new way past the crash site. Wisps of steam continued to rise from the blacktop. James’ words burned my brain. A mist. These men or women, or perhaps children, who may’ve been running errands, too, had lives of mist. Now some of them lie dead in ambulances. And other people lined the sides of this four-lane like vultures, gawking over glass-ridden blacktop, as if other people were prey. This had become a spectacle of life’s brevity.

We do not know what tomorrow will bring. We do not know what today will bring. “For my days pass away like smoke,” (Ps 102:3a). As a husband, father, uncle, teacher, chaplain, soldier, etc. let me not forget. May I use my mind for that which matters, and not waste the days appointed.