Remembering

9-11, 2001, found me in Gulf Shores with my family and it was there that we watched in horror as the tragic events of the day unfolded like pages in a guest book at Jefferson Memorial.  I think being away from home made it seem even more surreal, more cold (as if the killing cold could have been any more bitter) almost like it was happening someplace else and not here in "you can't touch this" America. There's just something about being in your own home with its familiar intimacies that make things seem more, well, "real".  I think that must be why so many people feel the need to get away after suffering a personal tragedy, maybe somehow the impersonal-ness of a hotel room in a strange city must give some a temporary respite from the pain of reality?   (God never said that there wouldn't be pain, He promised that He would be with us during it.)

Since we didn't come home from the beach until late that next weekend it wasn't until I went back to work on Monday that I was finally able to talk to friends about what had happened that past Tuesday, about where they'd been when they heard the news and about how their own lives had been affected.  I think that God created in us an innate desire to bond, to cling, to share those common experiences with fellow human beings.  You might say that we unconsciously create our own unofficial group therapy sessions as the need arises as part of the mechanics of coping.  (Women, I must say, seem to have more of those bonding genes than men and we aren't afraid to call a therapy session in a heartbeat.)

Today in church we watched a short video of remembrance about 9/11/2001. And as I sat there and watched it I realized that almost all of the young children who had been in the early part of the service to share in a second-grader's baptism were not even born then, that the only thing that they will ever know about that day will be through the media and whatever we who were here then, tell them.  It made me think about Pearl Harbor and my generation.  We weren't around then.  I've only read about it or watched film clips of it.  My parents lived it as children.  9/11 is my own "Pearl Harbor" and the middle schoolers who sat in those seats at church will unfortunately have to wait on theirs.  And it will come.  Actually, I think it happens each day that any soldier loses his life on the battlefield but another event such as that which happened on 9-11 will probably happen again during the lives of those innocent children.  I say this with the sincerest regret that I can give you but also with a truck-load of confidence because as sinful man living in a sin filled world we are doomed to repeat our own bloody history until Jesus comes back to take His children out of it.  As long as sin exists we will keep hurting each other with a vengeance but Hallelujah, what an Answer we have for the hurting and the incredible pain that we bring on ourselves.  Thank you Jesus, our  very Balm in Gilead.

Kiss your loved ones today.  Tell God thank you, for everything, and I mean everything.  Never take tomorrow for granted.  Those who perished at the World Trade Center had absolutely no idea that their last tomorrow was already in the history books.