We were on vacation when the CN train derailed behind our house. A dozen cars rocked their way clear off the tracks, landing jackknifed and piggyback; a tangled mass of steel tonnage.
Seven cars held cement powder, four tanker cars carried liquid sulphur, and one car carried nothing. The derailment injured only the train and the earth it landed on, but along with eleven other homes, ours got the notice to briefly evacuate.
Ernie and Grace, our parrot and cat, blithely disobeyed. By the time we returned home a week or so later, the town looked normal – except for the jagged edge bordering fields of ripening grain, and the town’s easternmost street.
For weeks, a mass of demolition vehicles poured over the site, not only removing rail cars, but land that may be contaminated by their contents. From early morning until evening we heard them, chugging and creaking, beeping and banging.
We could see some of their work from our backyard, but the Preacher and I often wandered over to the site itself to watch the big Cats (and Toshibas and other models of excavation equipment) at work. The crew seemed not to mind. Some of the blue hats even stopped to talk.
From small excavators to monster shearers, the machines attacked the fallen rail cars. Some ripped them apart piece by piece; their massive jaws and claws tearing through the tons of steel as easily – and with as much dexterity – as my own hand tears thin cloth. Then they sorted and piled the debris as neatly and easily as any of us would sift and sort a cutlery drawer.
Near the end of the clean-up numerous piles dotted the site, waiting for dump trucks to finish hauling them away. How strange to see dozens of train wheels and axles piled together like an unruly tangle of barbells in a giant’s gym; stacks of carriage springs, couplings and sheet metal. Mountains of cement and soil waited for export too. Only the four tankers remained – waiting for the liquid sulphur sealed inside to solidify before a later removal.
I don’t know why the train jumped the track. But someone who saw it happen said he noticed one car started swaying a little. Within seconds, that momentum carried to eleven more, until all twelve jumped the tracks.
That’s a powerful testimony to the influence of one.
Sometimes, when people decide to sway over, even jump off, the smooth rails of the status quo, others follow. That creates messes of another sort. It can even destroy them. That happened to Jesus Christ and has since happened to millions of his followers; people persecuted, even martyred, simply for jumping the tracks of popular thinking, corrupt ideologies, apathy and injustice.
I don’t like those messes. But God’s word reminds me that believers are called not to follow the status quo, but his resurrected Son, who challenged it, despite the consequences. How? First, by loving the poor and weak, welcoming sinners and confronting the church.
Ouch.
