The little car was waiting for a traffic signal to change. Suddenly there was a jolt, a jar, and the sickening sound of crumpling metal. From the car behind a protesting voice rose: “But officer, I only looked away for one moment!” And then a man’s voice: “That’s all it takes, ma’am! All it takes. Now, how do you spell your name?”
Too bad. One car damaged, one car “totaled” and all it took was one moment.
Another road, another car, and a sudden crash, a scream, a burst of flame, and a young life ended and a heartbroken mother crying: “One moment you have everything-everything!-and the next it is all taken away and you have nothing. In only one moment!”
Or think, if you had that “one moment,” or even several moments, a time to react in the face of disaster—could you use it successfully? There was a recent train wreck. Two trains hurtling toward each other and for only three or four seconds “they could possibly see each other.” Did it help? No, twenty-five people were killed in that crash, and more than 135 others injured. How quickly, how suddenly, everything changed for so many.
But there is another moment which is still to come. “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye [and how quick is that?], the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised...and we shall be changed” (1 Cor. 15:5252In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:52)).
Changed? Life will change, but not to grief or sorrow nor even to regret, but to all the joy of the Father’s house forever.
BUT if we have never owned God as Father, never accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, there will not be time to change. All those who have not prepared for that great change, those who have chosen this world or have simply neglected “so great salvation,” there will not be time to change.
“I never gave it a thought” will be a very poor plea in that day. Think now! You “know not what a day may bring forth” and everything may be changed “in a moment”!