Asleep At The Wheel

-Recently we heard the story about Robert Sanchez who was text messaging some 22 seconds before his California commuter train slammed into a Union Pacific freight train, killing 25 people and injuring over 130 more

-The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that 100,00 crashes each year are caused by falling asleep at the wheel which results in 1,500 fatalities, 71,00 injuries and a loss of $12.5 billion.

-I was almost one of those statistics when I was working as a drill cadet for a basic training class at Fort Bliss, Texas outside El Paso. One of the other drill cadets was from El Paso. We were out at the ranges out in the desert for a few weeks and the drill sergeants decided to give us a break for a few days so my friend was driving us back to the post. I nodded off as the car droned along. I woke up as the right wheels hit the gravel on the side of the road. That was a boost of enough adrenaline to keep us alert for the rest of the drive back to the fort.

-I also, remember being on fire guard when I was a “cadidiot” doing training in the summers. Trying to wake up in the middle of the night and be alert is difficult when you’ve been training hard all day. I probably dozed off ever so briefly when I was on guard duty or when I was pulling security during Ranger school

-When we are tired, we all have a tendency to fall asleep

-One of the objectives of Ranger School is to stress the students by depriving them of food and sleep and see how they react. By the end of the course people are doing all sorts of crazy things because they are so sleep deprived. It’s a good thing they don’t give us live ammo or a lot more people would get hurt.

-While we were on a march during Ranger School, I fell asleep while I was walking. I’m not sure how long I was out but I definitely fell asleep.

-Some other guys walked up to trees and tried to put quarters in them thinking they were vending machines.

-Because of our humanness, we need sleep. We are actually very frail. We need our sleep.

-One theologian has stated that to prevent the attacks of the devil, we need to make sure we never get too lonely, too hungry or too tired

- If you do, you are setting yourself up to succumb to the devil’s temptations

-When we are weakened in those various states we find that we do things that we normally wouldn’t think about doing – things that we don’t think we are capable of

-You deprive a person of food long enough and they will eventually steal in order to eat

-We don’t think through the repercussions of our actions

-You deprive a person of meaningful contact with others for long enough and they will look for contact in ways that are potentially harmful to them

-We don’t always make smart decisions or decisions based on rational thought

-You deprive people of sleep long enough and they’ll start trying to put quarters in trees and expect to get something to eat or drink

-Have you ever done something that you regret wish you could do over again because you were overly tired, hungry or lonely?

- We probably all have

-When I was on my big diet last summer, trying to get down to 189 pounds so I could max my PT test I was really hungry – I was only eating two very small meals a day, running 30 + miles a week and sleeping about 5 or 6 hours a night

-I was run ragged

-Linda told me, “Either you have to start eating again or you have to be nicer.”

-Apparently, all that dieting and work turned me into a big meanie {PAUSE}

-Think about what happened to the Israelites when they were put into austere conditions

-When they were deprived of permanent homes, forced to wander in the desert wilderness what did they do?

-How did they react when they were forced to live on bread and water, oh and quail too?

-What did they do?

-They melted down all their gold and made an idol out of it

-They put the Lord to the test

-God had just saved them in the greatest work of salvation in the Old Testament

-He forced Pharaoh’s hand and made it so he had to let the Israelites go

-He parted the Red Sea and let all the more than a million Israelites go through on dry land

-He swallowed up Pharaoh’s army as he let the Red Sea envelop them

-He had saved the Israelites from slavery to the Egyptians and then they wanted to go back