7 min read

Day 1: Rearview Mirror

Day 1: Rearview Mirror

Rearview Mirror

“Your ten-year reunion?” his young colleague asked as they waited for the forklift to pass before crossing the lane.

Before Nathan could answer, a steel beam high up screamed as it snapped. Both turned their heads as tons of twisted metal crashed where they’d been standing. Blasts ripped through the air like rapid rifle fire. The world tilted sideways. Something cracked sharply as Nathan hit the concrete.

Slowly, he lifted his head. Nausea. Raw fear. A stabbing pain flared at the base of his skull. 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. Crimson 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 left, 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, determined to outrun a world that no longer made sense. 

Piles of polluted snow slumped along the roadside, melting into dirty puddles. Only days ago, it had blanketed everything in purity—a grim reminder that 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, and of 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 politeness or small talk. He asked the half-formed questions that tangled inside him and gave raw, unfiltered answers in return.

His younger colleague died just two feet from where he fell. After a week, his desk was cleared and the promising young professional replaced by a cost-cutting software upgrade.

Questions and flashbacks terrorized Nathan and mercilessly prodded him 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 pulsating sense of purpose that propelled them; with their crystal-clear 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. 

In their careers and physical appearances, his former classmates reflected what he may have expected. In other aspects, however, 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 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. An ever-jubilant one had accepted the faith of her fiancé and was wearing a hijab. She mingled with some girls but kept yards away from all the men. 

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, with her pupils dilated, leaned in too close. Her breath, heavy with yesterday’s hangover, spilled forth a stream of overly sentimental declarations of her unending love for “Jeee-zus.” A shiver ran down his spine when he walked away.

Later, when discussing his accident, Nathan asked two old friends, who had since become a priest and a pastor, about their experience in ministry. The pastor shared how he often felt overwhelmed and that he was fighting against a tide of indifference. The priest, with a weary, gentle smile, confided that he would lie awake at night, questioning if his efforts made any difference in a world that had drifted so far from faith. Their confessions hit him like a physical blow, mushrooming his inner doubts. He scratched his bruised jaw and frowned. He’d expected the pastor and priest to offer words of encouragement, not the other way around. For a moment, he wanted to say something—anything—to reassure them. But what could he possibly say when their weariness and questioning eyes echoed his own? Instead, he just nodded, trying to let his presence be enough.

Nathan’s heart ached as the priest and pastor told him that the popular chaplain of their former Christian Youth group, a fountain of inspiration to the whole group, had stepped away from his faith a few years ago. He had also abandoned his wife and son to move in with a younger woman, whom he soon left for yet another girlfriend.

In contrast to the heartbreaking news of spiritual decline, Nathan was pleasantly surprised when he was re-introduced to 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 of Christianity outside America and Europe in places where you would never expect it. Her inspiring stories were about commitment, sacrifice, and faith, often despite harsh persecution. The radiant young doctor’s testimony of God’s work in other parts of the world glimmered like a rare gem in the dim light of the reunion hall.

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 shaken not just by sorrow, but 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.

He 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 replaced by software and AI?

Nathan said softly to himself with a note of despair in his voice, “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 the entertainment industry and ever-present social media? 

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, He'll be nothing but a cultural relic—a melted puddle that once meant something.”


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.