12 Killed As Porch Collapses in Chicago
AP is reporting a tragic accident last night in Chicago. According to the report, "50 people, most of them in their early 20s, had crammed onto the apartment porch for a party in the city's affluent Lincoln Park neighborhood when the floor fell at about 12:30 a.m., police said. Seven men and five women, most of them apparently on the porches directly below, were sandwiched between the falling floors and killed." It is so often said that when we are young, we feel invulnerable, we don't think of death or contemplate our own mortality. Some would call these people young adults, some would call them kids, but whatever you call them, they were young and just starting out in life. How many of them had even begun to think about life's Big Picture? How many had started to wonder what it was all about, why they were here, why their lives were the way they were? How many of them were ready that summer night to meet their maker?

It is said that life is what happens when you are busy making other plans. But we all need to stop and slow down, find a quite place to think about the Big Questions, to pray, to talk to God and to really listen.

By the time we have reached early adulthood, most of us have been confronted with the harsh reality of life, with injustice, with loss, with pain in some form or other. Most of us reach a point where we want to scream out "it should not be this way!" With luck, we will find others who will guide us to the truth that God did not mean it to be this way, and He is standing by with an answer, ready to fix the problem at the heart of the human condition. His answer, the offer of salvation and eternal life, is available to all, extended personally by God when he became human. How many of us have thought, "if there is a God, why doesn't he just reveal himself, that would be so much simpler and straightforward." The Good News is that He did just that, He came down from heaven and took on human form and said, "here I am, here is what it is all about, here is how to fix things." God offers redemption (to redeem, to take back, to restore) to all people through faith in Jesus the Christ. Take Him at His word, accept His offer of salvation and eternal life. This day, your life may be required of you, are you ready to meet your maker?
-- by Joel