Track Treading

I want you to imagine a hypothetical situation with me for a few moments. Really think about this situation and put yourself in the midst.

Let’s say that on one particular day, you are standing at a train station. On days before this one, you were the kind of guy who would challenge danger and walk the line of risk. Every day prior, you would hop down onto the tracks and run 50 yards up the track and back. It was a fun thing you would do to display your sense of independence and the thrill of doing things that were risky, seeing as you had no idea when a train might be coming other than the light that would sometimes peer through the fog in the distance. Other people at the station would do this as well, only some would sit on the tracks instead, while others would ride their bikes the opposite way 40 yards, and still others would sit on the edge of the platform holding their legs out above the track, not willing to take the bigger risks like others; still unsure of the consequences. Many did this their own way, but most people at the station would partake in some form of “track treading”.

However, today as you are walking to the station, a man stops you on the sidewalk. He tells you that he, in fact, is the owner of the railways and the president of the transportation services.

He informs you that sometime today, though he won’t say when, a high-speed train traveling from San Francisco to Chicago is passing through the tracks at your station as a bypass, and that it will do so at some point before your regularly scheduled commuter train arrives.

As you continue conversing, he lets you know that one time before, a long time ago, this same train was bypassing through the station. An entire community of people were standing on the tracks. They were not aware of the fast approaching train, and in a last stitch effort to rescue them, the man threw himself under the train and caused an emergency stop, saving the lives of all the people. However, the train had stopped so far away from the station that no one who was on the tracks had seen the heroic act of this brave man, who just happened to also be president of the transportation service. Miraculously he survived. As he stood there telling you this story, you began to realize how incredible this man truly is, and how much love he must have had for people that didn’t even know him. As you depart from the man and continue heading for the station, he yells out to you from a distance that he has scheduled this train personally, that he himself will be driving this train, and that it will be right on time and will be passing through on schedule going 180 miles per hour. This time, however, it will not be stopping, even if people are on the tracks.

As you arrive to the tracks, you see people dancing and walking along the track as usual, carelessly treading the lines of safety and completely unaware of the fast train approaching.

The rest of this imaginary story is in your hands, and you decide what happens to these people. Do you tell them about the man you spoke to, how he warned about the train coming, and what he had done before to save a group of people? Do you keep it to yourself and keep off the tracks regardless of what others are doing at the moment the fast train passes through?

The right answer seems so obvious, so urgent, and so important. We would all warn these people and tell them that a train is approaching and that their lives are at risk. I’m pretty sure none of us would just let a bunch of people get hit by a train we knew was approaching.

Is this not how our Christian faith story goes as well? Have we not been given an important insight to truth that much of our world has forgotten, or even possibly never heard? Jesus came to this earth to save all of us from an impending and tragic death, a death we deserve for “treading the tracks” of life. Instead, He threw Himself in front of us and took the penalty for our irresponsibility and sin. He did it because He loves us.

Do you know anyone else who would die for you just because of things you’ve done wrong, someone Who would be executed for all the bad things you did simply because He loves You even though so many of us don’t even know Him? If we had been saved from the oncoming train because we knew the truth, would we not also want everyone else on the tracks to be saved?

That is what Christianity is rooted in- the Truth that Christ loved us so much He died for us, and that if we’d just accept it and step off “the tracks”, we’d be saved. If we are so adamant about our faith and so in love with Jesus, then we should love His people enough to want to save them from the inevitable death that this world brings to each of us. All we have to do is open our mouths, open our lives, open our hearts to love, and tell people to “get off the tracks because a train is coming” and that we care for their safety and well-being.

So many of us are so busy yelling at people to get off the tracks and criticizing them for being on them in the first place that we forget we once walked on the tracks as well. We forget that we need to be telling them WHY they need to get off the tracks rather than stating the obvious.