Rachel Meece

Saturday Morning around 3:30 am my wife awoke to a phone call from her mother. I knew it was bad news from Winnie’s tone of voice but I would have never imagined what followed. I laid as still as I could for a moment hoping that the bad news would just disappear or maybe that I was dreaming, but Winnie looked right at me and said, “Rachel has died in a car wreck tonight.” You could have knocked me over with a feather. At around 11:45 that night a cheerful, pretty, outgoing Rachel Meece was gone forever. I didn’t know Rachel that well but I did get to spend some time with her in our home. She came down with some of my wife’s family for about a week or so and stayed with us. One time a group of my wife’s family went to a Christmas event together in Nashville. Like any normal teenager she had to make sure her presence was known.

I often wonder as many will…”Why do bad things happen?” Why would God allow for such a tragedy? Of course God knows better than we do and all His judgments are righteous and true. But why? First we must remember that in the beginning everything was good. We all know the story about how Adam sinned and from there sin passed to every man. But what is sin? Let me see if I can help you out with this analogy.

Let’s imagine for a moment that you had a small baby. Would you allow this baby to play on a balcony 10 stories in the air without any boundaries or rails? I would hope not. But if you put boundaries or rails then you just might let you child out there. You would probably stand out there too. You might even lean against the rail and look down. That is why God gives us rules and laws. He tells us “Don’t go out of this boundary. I want to protect you and love you and I know what is best for you”. “Just do what I’m telling you do to. Don’t step outside of my boundaries because then you will be stepping away from what I know is best for you.”
You see, when we lie, steal, and disrespect our parents we are stepping outside of God’s laws. When we look with lust in our hearts we are guilty of adultery and when we hate the Bible tells us we are guilty of murder. When we break the 10 Commandments we sin by breaking God’s laws and stepping outside of His boundaries.

But God is rich in His mercy. And He is not willing that anyone should suffer that is why God sent His son, Jesus Christ who is God in the flesh. Jesus took your sin and went to the cross, suffered and died a horrible brutal death. Then He rose from the dead and defeated death forever. But you must do something to access this forgiveness and mercy and this is what it is. The Bible tells us that you must repent and believe the Gospel. You must turn you back on sin, (breaking God’s laws) and believe that Jesus Christ died and was resurrected from the dead. That is the beauty of the Gospel. That God would forgive sinful people like me, like you, like all of us. That is the beauty of the cross.

Rachel will be missed and she will continue to be loved by her family and friends. I once heard it said, “Good friends often remind us of things that we don’t want to deal with, but that are most important.” Rachel reminds us that one day, we too will all die. Please reflect on your life, your sin and what Jesus did on the cross for all of us.

James 4:13-14 - Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.

Please continue to pray for this family. Ask God for healing and comfort and that His Holy Spirit will be with them in their time of need and loss. Thank you.