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Fifty years ago yesterday, my friend, Kevin Cox, was killed in a car-train accident in Kansas. He, along with five others in the car, died. There were eight in the family station wagon. Kevin was taking kids from their church to the local town swimming pool in Cedar Point. Kevin didn’t see the train.
Sixteen-year-olds are not supposed to die. At that age, life is eternal, pain an unwelcome nuisance, and death, not even on the radar.
When my mom woke me up on August 9, 1976, she showed me the newspaper about the accident. I was beside myself, literally crying for the next two days, while essentially holed up in my room. I recall my younger sisters asking mom what was wrong with me. I wasn’t sure either.
At 16, I had been drifting away from Jesus; negotiating with my parents on how little I would go to church. I was about to become a high school senior (yes, at 16). The world was luring me with it’s illusive glitter; a mirage of ideals that in the end would make life even more miserable. If anyone should have died, it should have been me, not Kevin. Definitely not the other kids.
When I saw Kevin’s body in the casket and later heard his testimony of faith in Christ, the Lord was preparing me to meet Him. I just didn’t realize it. The town’s high school gymnasium was, for that day, converted into a large funeral service for six loved and now deceased children; all under the age of 16. My guilt-ridden soul met the grace of a loving heavenly Father that day.
“David, I want to have a living relationship with you, but we can’t do that if you are not in the Word. I want to meet with you all the time.”
No audible voice. Just a tap in my soul that the God of the Universe wanted to connect with me; love me.
The day after the funeral, August 12, I found my dusty Bible under my bed and started reading it with much eager anticipation! That began what has now been a half-century of walking with God in His Word. When I was 19, attending Kansas State University, I started journaling. Except for about three weeks over the past five decades, journaling about my life and time in the Word with Jesus has been a daily spiritual rhythm.
Journaling and being in the Word daily is NOT the point. Don’t get caught up in the decades of duration, as if that is the key to salvation; Jesus is. It’s the cultivation of time with Him. Not a timeslot each day, but walking in His presence throughout the day, fueled by sitting with Him each morning.
The point here is living an ongoing conversational relationship with Jesus.
God used something tragic, the death of Kevin, to awaken this struggling soul to life in Christ.
2 Corinthians 4 goes like this.
16 So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self[a] is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
In light of eternity, even our earthly death is a “light and momentary affliction.”
7But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.
The light of Christ in you and me is the treasure in these mortal jars of clay.
Fifty years have flown by. My hope and prayer is that any glimpses of the surpassing power seen in me would be recognized as from God and not myself.
Here’s to eternity!
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Here’s a synopsis of that tragic accident from compiled news reports.
TRAIN-CAR ACCIDENT TAKES LIVES OF SIX CHILDREN IN KANSAS
Six children from the Homestead Friends Meeting near Cedar Point, Kansas, were instantly killed Sunday, August 8, when the car in which they were traveling to go swimming was hit by a train at a temporary crossing.
Four of the children, Brenda 14, Rick 13, Bradley 11, and Renee 7, were children of Larry and Becky Edwards and grandchildren of Kansas Yearly Meeting superintendent, John Robinson; Kim Elaine, 14, was the daughter of Kenneth and Ruth Stahl, and Kevin, 16, the driver of the car, was the son of Eldon and Gayle Cox, pastor at Homestead Friends.
Funeral services were held in the Chase County High School auditorium attended by an estimated 1,000 people. Pastor Dale Lewis of Northridge Friends, Wichita, read selected passages from Kevin’s Bible; Gerald Teague, assistant superintendent of KYM, preached the sermon. Three hymns, “How Great Thou Art,” “Amazing Grace,” and “Just a Closer Walk with Thee,” were sung by the congregation.
The children were buried in the cemetery of the Homestead Friends Church in identical caskets, on each of which was a framed picture of the child whose remains it contained. A memorial service was held concurrently at the Kansas Yearly Meeting sessions in Wichita , Kansas.
A seventh child, Karla Stahl (sister of Kim) was released from the hospital
about August 21 , and the eighth child, Todd Edwards, was expected to have been released about September 1. Although there was some internal bleeding, examination showed no permanent internal injury.
The crossing was reported to have been obscured by brush and weeds. After investigation, it was reported neither the driver nor the railroad were held liable.
The car was evidently going about five miles an hour and the freight train about fifty-five miles an hour.
Warrior On!
David Riffel is the Founder and Executive Director of www.Mentoring-Warriors.com. Having gone through his warrior years (18-30) essentially without a mentor, God has placed in him a heart for warriors, to come alongside them in various ways as they figure out life. David’s newly released book, Mentoring Warriors: Coming Alongside Young Men 18-30, outlines principles for mentoring and gives advice for warriors in six key areas of life: self-management, life skills, education/career, relationships, faith, and identity.
