'Ultimate reality'

A few days ago a local young man fell to his death down an elevator shaft. It was his birthday, and friends were arriving, and all indications are that he was looking at his cell phone and did not notice that when the elevator doors opened there was no floor. He fell several stories. I wondered how many seconds it takes to fall four stories, and I have been praying that his last words were "Help me, Jesus." That's all it took for the thief on the cross.

Both my sons knew this 25-year-old from their years on the high school wrestling team. He was a freshman when my elder son was a varsity senior, and he was the team captain when my younger son was a callow new recruit. My boys learned the news separately, and they briefed me at my granddaughter's birthday picnic yesterday.

Around 1973 when I first arrived at Francis Schaeffer's Swiss L'Abri, a truck careened down the curvy mountain road and to the driver's death just yards from us. I was not yet a Christian but was standing there looking down at the scene with the two twentysomethings who ran the Christian commune. One of them broke the silence with a two-word summation: "Ultimate reality."

Death cuts through everything with a razor's edge-our pride, our fog, our sleepiness. My sons didn't say much to each other at the park, in the midst of a crowd of their beer-drinking friends. But I know that alone in the middle of the night they have lost sleep staring at the ceiling, and they have been afraid. I can tell.

Listen to commentaries by Andrée Seu.