Life changes so quickly for some. Today there was a fatality due to an avalanche in the mountains just above Cooke City. A snowmobiler from Billings and his friend were out riding and got caught in the slide of snow plummeting down the mountain. His friend had to dig him out, only to bring to the surface a corpse.
It is part of my job as the sole minister here in Cooke City to assist in these types of accidents. So, a mere two hours after the avalanche broke I sat with the victim's friend in the Cooke City Firehall, center of operations for Search and Rescue, as he tried to process the events of the day, too shocked to even wonder "why?" What do you say to a person in that situation? I could only ask him about his friend and how they would spend their time together, who he was, what he did, etc. He will have a long, lonely and quiet drive back to Billings without his best friend in the seat next to him, as they had done nearly every weekend for the last six winters. His life changed today in a matter of seconds, literally in the blink of an eye, and I have to wonder whether it was necessary, whether his friend's death was necessary.
There is a devastated family tonight.
I wasn't trained to be a pastor and I certainly wasn't trained to be a pastor in a place like Cooke City, MT; but God is gracious and good and supplies every need we might have to be in service to him. He did today, anyway.
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