Many of those who boarded the sleek passenger train in Vancouver that Monday evening were expecting to enjoy the trip of a lifetime. The people were looking forward to traveling across Canada, enjoying its varied landscapes and charm. By late that night, the train had already traveled up the Fraser valley, across the Coastal and the Rocky Mountains and through the eastern foothills.
However, for many their vacation ended in the dark of night when a terrible wreck jolted them from their sleep. At 1:50 a.m. two locomotives and ten of the train’s passenger cars jumped the tracks and came to a grinding, tangled halt in a wheat field on the open prairie. Many of the passengers were thrown from their seats. Sixty-five were injured and one died as a result of the derailment.
Within 15 minutes, rescue workers arrived and quickly evacuated the people, rushing the injured to a nearby hospital. Dawn was just breaking over the desolate scene when officials announced that the derailment was caused by a broken axle of the second locomotive. It was determined that two hours out of Vancouver, a warning device called a “hot-bearing detection system” had signaled that an axle bearing on one of the locomotives was dangerously overheating. Rather than heed the warning, the crew instead disconnected the warning device! Later during a stop, the crew was unable to “see” any sign of damage to the locomotive’s wheels and so the passenger train continued on its fateful journey.
The crewmen were foolish and wrong to disconnect the very warning device that was installed in order to prevent such a tragic accident. How much sorrow, pain and even loss of life happened because its faithful warning was ignored!
It is far more important to heed the warnings that God gives. It isn’t His desire to have any of His own suffer. But we might be like the children of Israel, who, when warned because of their disobedience, “mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and misused His prophets.” What sorrow resulted from not listening to God’s warnings. “The wrath of the Lord arose against His people, till there was no remedy” (2 Chron. 36:1616But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy. (2 Chronicles 36:16)).
The dead and injured on the train had trusted the crew (who were unhurt) to take them safely to their destination. Let’s remember that if we disregard the Lord’s warnings to us, others may also have to suffer.
From a story by K. Heslop