When Life Pauses

There are moments when normal life gets put on hold.

For folks at the university where I work, one of these moments took place last Friday afternoon, when a bus of students and faculty overturned en route to another town for a service project.

The travelers on the bus had intended to spend the weekend at a children's home. Instead, many spent the weekend in hospitals. One spent the weekend at a welcome home party in Heaven.

For those of us who were in our offices, or homes, or dorm rooms when the news broke, life paused for the weekend.

It no longer seemed important that we had to prepare for a big meeting on Monday, or that she needed to make some headway on her term paper, or that they were absorbing the news that their positions would be eliminated within the year, or that he had been planning to go out with his friends that night.

Instead, we started preparing for the drive to the hospital. She gathered with her friends around the TV and their smartphones to watch the incoming updates. They left work early to be with their families. He decided to head to the prayer service instead of the club.

The university's social media channels lit up with prayers, questions, and proffered answers. A little-used "emergency" blog became a flowing newsreel. Local news stations received more 18-to-24-year-old viewers than ever in their history. High school football games paused for a moment of silence. Hostile and critical commenters were nowhere to be heard.

Instead of football, work, entertainment, and rivalries, our attentions became focused on love, family, comfort, mourning, community, life, healing, tenderness.

We've become concerned for students we've never even met. We've postponed important meetings to schedule time for corporate prayer, weeping, and thanksgiving for lives lived and healing begun. We've laid aside differences to offer kindness and compassion toward one another.

Right now, we want to be in communication, and we want to be together. Normal life can wait for a while.

Perhaps it would do us all a bit of good if normal life included more of this unity, communication, and love - without requiring tragedy to remind us of these things.