Rearview Mirror

They had all the time in the world, and it lasted for ten seconds.

"The inspector will be late," Nathan said with a friendly shrug. His gaze shot up. Every nerve awake. There is something... a whisper, a tremble?

The construction site hummed with its usual morning chaos.

“Your ten-year reunion?” his young colleague interrupted his thoughts as they waited for the forklift to pass before crossing the lane. Scanning skyward, Nathan began, "All my best friends..."

Before he could finish, a steel beam high up screamed as it snapped. Both spun as tons of twisting metal crashed where they’d been standing. Blasts ripped through the air like rapid rifle fire. The world tilted sideways, concrete rushed up. Crack. Black nothingness.

Slowly, Nathan lifted his head. Nausea. Raw fear. A stabbing pain at the base of his skull. Ears buzzing. Voices far off.

The forklift’s cracked mirror beside his head emerged first through the settling dust. Through the debris, only boots were visible, toes pointing at impossible angles. Wine red spreading across concrete.

Two weeks later, Nathan Lucas flinched as the neck brace dug into his collarbone. He yanked at it, gritting his teeth. The car swerved, twisting the knot in his gut. 

The high school reunion still clung to him like stale cigarette smoke. He flicked a glance into the rearview mirror, half-expecting to see the past creeping up behind him. The hollow ache in his chest tightened. Nathan stepped on the accelerator to outrun a world that no longer made sense. 

His younger colleague died just two feet from his face. After a week, his desk was gone and the promising young professional replaced by a cost-cutting AI upgrade.

The first day he could drive again, Nathan Lucas stood at the front door of his young colleague's family, half-empty box in his hands. Workspace belongings: a mug, family photo, his hoodie, tiny tidbits. He'd wished he could fill it with something that would help ease the void in their lives. Impossible.

The door swung open. They hugged, no words. Just compassionate, watery eyes and a long embrace. Emptiness and a cup of tea. When the parents asked if they could send flowers to place on their son's desk, Nathan froze. His replacement needed no workspace or kindness.

Piles of polluted snow slumped along the roadside, melting into dirty puddles. Only days ago, it had blanketed everything in purity. A grim reminder: nothing lasts.

A grin tugged at his lips as faces from the teenage Christian youth group flickered through his mind: memories of cramming into an old van for adventurous weekend retreats, singing around campfires, lively debating, self-discovery, and helping the poor. Those were days of camaraderie, clarity, and conviction; a life brimming with meaning and purpose. Or at least, that’s how it had seemed.

A few miles later, Nathan growled, bashing his fist on the steering wheel. He shifted in his seat, easing into a reflective calm.

At the reunion, his bruises, neck brace, and recent accident at work added gravity to every conversation. He didn't bother with small talk or the niceties that avoid deeper issues. He voiced the half-formed questions churning inside him and gave raw, unfiltered answers in return.

Questions and flashbacks terrorized Nathan mercilessly, prodding him day and night to consider what he was doing with his life. He was frustrated by years of fading faith and became intensely aware of an inexpressible cry from his core. 

He’d pinned his hopes on the class reunion as an opportunity to reconnect with the members of the old Christian youth group: with the electric sense of purpose that propelled them; with their unwavering sense of course; with the undefinable inner glow you could spot from a mile away. But the faces he saw and stories he’d heard at the reunion painted a picture of diverging paths. 

Shards

In their careers and looks, his former classmates reflected what he expected. In other aspects, he was taken aback. He heard many painful mentions of mental health battles and loneliness, and the relationships and family lives of his classmates were more complicated and broken than he expected: from twice-divorced and kids with three different partners to histories of relationships that had crumbled and rebuilt, only to fall apart again. Some eyes held pain that cut him deep; others, indifference that twisted the knife. 

Nathan sat outside in the dark, alone, escaping the reunion chatter for a while. Stabs through his body, and from within. The confusing difference in spiritual commitment levels among former members of the old Christian youth group jammed his brain. Their faith, which bonded them in camaraderie as teenagers, unraveled. A mere handful still seemed steadfast in their convictions; the rest had wandered all over.

One brainy visitor of the original youth group had now diverted his search to Eastern spirituality and Buddhism. Nathan overheard him explaining meditation techniques. Another had become consumed by Islam, ever arguing about the Quran.

Quite a few youth-group friends had become agnostic or atheist. Most members' lives had filled up with a multitude of priorities that bumped matters of faith out to the very edges, where it hung frayed and forgotten. And one, pupils dilated, leaned in too close as she slurred her love for "Jeee-zus." A shiver ran down his spine. As she walked away, a blister pack of tablets dropped from her bag. Tears shot to his eyes.

Later, he discussed the accident with two old friends who had become a priest and a pastor. Nathan asked about their work in ministry. The pastor looked down, then sighed, “Month by month the pews grow emptier.” The priest, with a weary smile, admitted he lay awake at night, wondering if anything he did mattered. Their confessions hit him like a physical blow, mushrooming his inner doubts. He scratched his bruised jaw. He’d expected the shepherds of souls to encourage someone reeling from death’s door. Not the other way around.

For a moment, he wanted to say something to reassure them. Anything. Instead, he just nodded, trying to let his presence be enough.

Nathan brightened his voice to ask about their youth group leader, but their faces told him he'd stepped on a landmine. Their former chaplain, once a fountain of inspiration, had walked away from his faith. He had abandoned his wife and son to move in with a younger woman. Then left her for another.

In contrast to this heartbreaking news, Nathan was pleasantly surprised when he re-connected with a graduate who only joined their school in her final year. After her studies, she worked briefly as a medical doctor in rural Asia before being transferred to Africa, and she timed a visit home to coincide with the reunion. She told Nathan about the tremendous growth she has witnessed of Christianity outside America and Europe. "Places where you would never expect it." Eyes welled up and voice trembling, she told stories of commitment, sacrifice, and faith. About people walking for days to meetings that sometimes last through a night. About faces lit up by gratitude and hope despite poverty, loss, and persecution.

The radiant young doctor’s testimony of God’s work in far-off lands glimmered in the dim light of the reunion hall. For the first time that night, something stirred in Nathan. The faint spark of possibility.

As he drove home, Nathan’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, his knuckles white. Each passing mile deepened his sense of loss, not only of any clarity and certainty they had previously known but for the unity and shared conviction that had bonded the youth group. Where he had hoped to find reassurance and a sense of community, encouragement, and belief, he found himself questioning even more. His fragile faith was shaken by a gnawing sense of betrayal by the friends who once stood beside him, by the leader and mentor who once lit the way.

Nathan felt let down and insulted by the shallow responses and bumper sticker answers to his questions. The certainties of youth had given way to the complexities and confusion of adulthood. Faith was no longer a simple matter of attending a youth gathering and singing sweet hymns but a complex and challenging journey.

A motorcycle roared past him.  As the rider cut through the fresh morning air, Nathan felt locked and chained in his sealed metal cage.

Snowman

As he parked in his driveway, Nathan’s gaze fixed upon the snowman that he had built with his sister’s children when they visited “their favorite injured uncle” the day before his departure for the reunion. The friendly, open snowman face was now twisted into an expression of plain agony. An eye had dropped out, and the nose was sliding off its face. Twig arms flailed hopelessly in the air, the snowman drowning into the soil.
“That wretched snowman," Nathan muttered, ”was my one victory since the crash." A sigh escaped like air from a punctured lung.

He looked up. An odd pang of sympathy cut through Nathan’s heart. The collapsing figure mirrored his post-reunion state of mind. The sheer delight of his sister’s children with their radiating snowman felt distant, like a half-remembered dream. They’d snapped some selfies with it, confidently declaring it the best snowman ever: a cautionary tale for any new snowmen.

Nathan’s thoughts shifted from the snowman’s slow demise to something far more unsettling. Once admired, glorious, and mighty, God had been at the center of their vibrant youth group, and of Western culture in general. Now, He was sidelined and melting, losing appeal and influence. For many in Western society, God had completely melted away.

As he watched the once-proud snowman now slumped and dissolving, a chill ran through Nathan that had nothing to do with the winter air. This was exactly what was happening to God in the Western world, melting from glory into a formless puddle that people simply stepped around.

Nathan looked down and walked inside.

Adieu

Nathan was intrigued by the compassionate young doctor’s testimony of vibrant faith in foreign lands, which contrasted so sharply with a melting Jesus here at home. Nathan wondered: 

Is God offshoring all his work to other countries and cultures?
Has he emigrated from America and Europe? 
Has God been sidelined among us by omniscient, ever-present computing in the cloud?

Nathan's voice cracked as he mumbled, “Snowmen can’t survive summer.” 

He wondered: 

Can God survive the “summer” of affluence in America, Europe, and Australia?
Could God survive our education, science, and technology? 
Can God survive social media and ever-present entertainment?

Nathan closed his eyes and sighed. “The gospel may flourish in the non-Western world, but God is evaporating from the West. By the time I have children and grandchildren, will God's name only be seen carved on museums that once were places of worship? Christ's name only be heard as a cuss word?”

★

The Snowman Jesus Phenomenon

The more people’s thinking is influenced
by modern Western culture,
the less glorious God appears to be,
until he completely melts away.

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