Counting Down to the Big Red Stop
One clever device used at many traffic-lighted junctions in Kunming, but not so much if at all in some other Chinese cities, is a large digital display next to each set of lights that counts down the seconds before the lights change (in Kunming’s case, the last nine seconds only). This countdown system is a commendable idea intended to help maintain an efficient - and safe - traffic flow.
If you’re waiting at red lights and the nine second red countdown has yet to begin you can relax more easily. Then, when the red numbers start counting down you can get ready to move off immediately ‘your’ green light appears. To some degree, that’s what actually happens. However, characteristic of Kunming, many cyclists and electric motorcycle riders at such red lights creep ahead into the junction as soon as, or even before, the nine second countdown begins. And some of them risk going right across the junction even while the last remaining vehicles are cutting across them on their green.
The green countdown warns you when the lights are about to turn red. If you’re approaching green lights and the green countdown has started, it helps you to assess whether you can get through or whether you need to prepare to stop. This green countdown is even less effective at enhancing safe traffic flow. It is, in fact, counter-productive as it encourages a significant minority of Kunming road users, unconsciously uniting with their kindred spirits in many other countries of the world, to race to get through the junction before (or at least not too long after) their last millisecond of green.
Ultimately though, all road users in Kunming know that there will be many green countdowns when they will have no choice but to stop. Similarly, everyone on the road of life will at some point become consciously aware that one day they will find themselves approaching their own - final - Big Red Stop light, beyond which there will be no further green.
How about us Christians? How conscious are we of the inevitable approach of our own Big Red Stop light? And how aware are we that we each have a personal green countdown to our Big Red Stop?
The bible tells us that we should consider the shortness of our lives. It compares them to a puff of wind, a passing shadow and a plant that springs up, blooms & dies all in the one day. After reading various relevant bible passages I could only conclude that the expression ‘your days are numbered’ applies to all of us – not just to people whose lives are under an immediate threat of some kind.
True to my somewhat morbid curiosity, after reading Psalm 90:12 recently I got my calculator out to help me count down the number of days I might have left, estimating of course. I literally got the shock of my life. The kind of numbers I think of as big are those that end in lots of zeros - millions, billions & trillions. In comparison, the number of my days as I estimated them was puny & insignificant. Let me recalculate afresh as an example for you. As I write I am 47 years old. Actually, I am well beyond my 47th birthday, but will assume I am exactly 47 for this exercise. If I generously give myself exactly 90 years of life before my Big Red Stop light, I would have 43 more years to live. Discounting leap years, this would equate to 15,695 days (43 x 365). Don’t you think that’s a small number? And of course, while I might live beyond my 90th birthday I may well not even live to 90.
Dare you count down your days like this - not to induce fear, but to stir yourself towards fresh dependence on God and renewed flexibility to His will for the remainder of your life?
‘Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.’
Psalm 90:12 (See also the whole of Psalm 90, Psalm 39 & Psalm 144:4)
‘A man’s life flies by as quickly as a horseman gallops past one’s window.’ Old Yakut saying (Siberia)
© Mark Alexander, 2008
