Princeton professor James Loder wrote movingly how his life was redirected by a near-death experience as a result of an auto accident. In reflecting on this, he began to consider what happens to people who stand in the borderland between life and death. A typical case, he writes, is a man who commutes to work every day by train. At the station one morning, he suddenly slips and gets wedged between the train and platform. In desperation and pain, he cries out to God that he will do anything if he can be saved, —then a few people arrive to pull him free.

Later on, in the safety of a hospital room, he decides that his "promise" was merely an expression of panic and, therefore, nonbinding. "Is it possible," Loder asks, "that he was closer to the fundamental reality of his existence while being crushed in pain against the platform than when he was reclining in that hospital bed?"' This doesn't mean that life can only be understood and lived when we are at its extremities. It does suggest, however, that "God's presence can be discovered at the center of life all the more vividly, all the more precisely, because of his appearance at the extremity."

It's at the extremities, even in a relatively secular society, when we are most aware of our need for God.