How much longer?

Okay, you may think that's a weird blog title, but bear with me and I'll try to explain. I've got an interesting and quite meaningful (to me, anyway) story to share.

On Tuesday night at about 6:30 we were enjoying our dinner when we received an unexpected telephone call from a neighbour, whose husband happens to be a policeman. She told us about a family who had a missing 8-year-old son. The situation sounded pretty desperate, and she asked if we could go to the family's place and join the search party.

We quickly gathered what torches and spare batteries we had, threw on a couple of jackets and headed off. Since Bradley was at soccer training, that left only Dad and me. It didn't take us long to get there, as they lived just across the river, which is only about 5 minutes from our place. When we got there, we found a few police cars with their lights on. If you've ever seen a police car in the dark with its lights on, but no siren, you'll understand what an eerie feeling it is. It seems alien, and becomes quite unnerving after a while. I'm getting off track, though.

To get back to the story, we formed a group of about 9 people, and walked to the top of a ridge that was behind the house. At this point Dad realized he wouldn't be able to manage it with his bad knee, so he turned back and returned to the car while I went on with the rest of the search party. We spread out leaving a 20 metre gap between each person, in a line from the top of the ridge to as far down as we could reach.

Keeping this formation, we walked for what seemed like ages. I'm pretty sure it would have been about 4 or 5 kilometres, but then I fail at estimating distance especially when I'm tired and especially when I'm walking in the bush with no sense of time. It was the most rugged country I've ever had to walk in, made worse by the fact that it was nighttime, and I could hardly see where I was stepping. It was an extremely steep hill, and very rocky. The problem was that the rocks were all smallish loose rocks, so whenever you take a step, you inevitably send a shower of pebbles onto the person below you. Sometimes there were larger rocks, and these posed a real danger to those searching below. At one point I got stuck on a cliff face - and I mean a literal cliff, not just a steep rocky outcrop - and it took me a while to find a way out. By that time everyone else had gone ahead, and I couldn't even see their lights. Fortunately I managed to find and catch up with them. It's interesting that in all that time, I don't think anyone considered their own safety once. Everybody was solely concerned with finding the missing boy, and praying that he hadn't gotten lost in such a place as this. Not many children would have been able to manage such rough country on their own, especially in the dark.

All in all, I'm very surprised that no one got hurt. It was a long night - or at least felt like it. The search lasted for a total of about 3½ hours... add treacherous terrain, pitch darkness, and sub-zero temperatures, and it felt like at least double that time.

I've since learned that there were 30 police and SES personnel searching at the same time. The situation was quite a lot more serious than I initially thought. Cooma police even sent for a helicopter from Canberra to help in the search, although I don't think it reached here in time. At about 9:30 PM one of the members of the search party received a text message informing him that the boy had been found. I can't begin to describe how relieved everyone was, especially the boy's family. Apparently he had been found at a house on the other side of the Murrumbidgee river. He must have walked about 4 kilometres downstream and seen some lights in the distance, so he crossed the river (I think he just waded across at a shallow area), and found his way to the house. Miraculously, the boy was completely unharmed, without any signs of hypothermia, in spite of being exposed to sub-zero temperatures for several hours while wearing shorts and a light jacket.

So in the end everything turned out well, but it left me thinking how lucky we all were that nothing more serious had occured. The situation could easily have been far worse. The 8-year-old boy could have been swept down the river when he tried to cross, any of the searchers might have slipped and gotten injured, or worse still, lost (very easy to, believe me), the boy may not have found his way to the neighbour's house, and he may not even have been found at all. Even though I had no idea who the boy was (and still don't), I am so grateful that he came to no harm. That night could easily have been his last.

Which brings me back to the title of this blog post - "How much longer?". You never know which day or night may be your last. How much longer will you spend living on this earth? Are you prepared for the life to come after this one? Is there anything that you can/need to do to be prepared? Never lose sight of the brevity of our time here - always remember that this life is about deciding how we are going to spend our eternal life. How will you spend yours? How much longer do you have to decide?