Right Now

There was a ferocious knock at the door. When I opened it, a police negotiator stood on my front porch, peering menacingly through the glass.

"Where are the f---ing kids?!" she demanded.

"Um, what?" I replied trepidly.

"We received a domestic disturbance call from this house! Open the door!"

Behind her were two or three squad cars, with officers on foot surrounding the house on all sides, their hands on their holsters.

I opened the door fully, and showed her that my house was completely empty, with only my furniture to keep me company, all while making no sudden moves.

"What address is this?!" she demanded.

I told her the address, and she swore under her breath. "We have the wrong house!" she yelled, and with a terse hand gesture, she motioned for the officers to stand down.

And that was how they left me: with no apology, and neighbors peaking quizzically out their windows at the entire escapade. I had thought that I had finally found a place I could call "home". But my reputation in that neighborhood, which was fairly upscale, never fully recovered from that incident, and less than a year later I was again looking for new housing.

To say that I've lived an unwillingly exciting life would be an understatement. Time and again, trouble has come knocking on my door, and my survival has been but through the grace of higher powers. I consider myself to be a boringly conventional man, so if this is how ugly things have repeatedly gotten for me in America, I can only imagine the pain and misery more interesting folk have had to endure.

In engineering they teach a very simple rule: whatever can go wrong, eventually will. I've written at length about the theoretical implications of that rule, on everything from bridge and building designs to nuclear meltdowns and global thermonuclear war. But for the purposes of this article, I will address only one very basic consequence of it: the inevitability of my own brutal, senseless death, most likely at the hands of my fellow countrymen.

Christ spoke at length about the trials of this world while He was ministering to the people of Israel. But one passage in particular has become entrenched in my mind: "And unless those days should be shortened, there should no human life be saved; but for the elect’s sake, those days shall be shortened." (Matthew 24:22) This passage tells me that, for all of the grandstanding and moralizing which is traded back and forth, there are none among us who by our own merits truly deserve salvation, and that it is only through divine grace that even a handful out of all of humanity will be saved from the wrath that is to come.

Inside, everyone assumes they will be among those chosen few to survive. And yet, the very word "survivor" implies that most will perish. And if those who are living the easy life have themselves little hope of seeing themselves through those difficult days, how much less so do those of us who struggle even in times of relative stability and tranquility?

That is why I have long since tried to make my peace with this world, as I could be pulled from it at almost any moment. I have taken no wife, nor started a family, as I would not want to leave those I loved behind without a husband or a father to care for them. And I have made no plans for my future, as it is a near certainty that I have no real future. All I, or any of us really have, is this moment, right now. And if we trade that away for anything else, then we will have bargained away our very lives, and received nothing in return.