September 11, 2024

                          Where Were You?

And now these three things remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. – 1 Corinthians 13:13

As the Alan Jackson song asks: Where were you when the world stopped turning? Most of us remember September 11, 2001 so well. Shock. Disbelief. Sorrow. Anger. Did you hit your knees in prayer?

And what about the day after? Were you kinder, more helpful to strangers? Did you let go of pettiness? Did you remember that we are One Nation, Under God?

Today is a beautiful, if sorrowful, reminder of what really matters. That’s the message Paul was trying to teach the Corinthians. This letter was to address a church in disarray. There was much finger pointing and arrogance. But accolades and bank accounts disappear. Disputes over who’s in charge and exactly how we should worship don’t really matter in the end.

Why do we hate each other simply because we have different views? Why do we use the Bible as a weapon, pulling verses out of context and spewing them at those who have a different point of view? When did we forget that we are ALL created in the image of God?

As I read my Bible today, I once again thanked Him for always telling the truth. God keeps His promises. God never leaves us – even when we leave Him. He loves us beyond anything we could ever imagine.

We are so quick to tell everyone to pray for revival and a return to God. What we really mean is that other people should become like us. We rarely understand that the journey to revival begins with the person we see in the mirror each day.

Where do we start? We begin by loving other people. Really loving them. Praying for eyes to see them as Jesus sees them. We cling to faith and hope in the middle of the turmoil that has seemed to engulf our great nation. We take each step forward with love in our hearts as we follow Jesus on our journey home.

September 11, 2021

 

Do More Than Remember

 

I lift up my eyes to the mountains – where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth. – Psalm 121:1-2

 

It’s funny how great tragedy makes us cling to God. We ignore Him day after day, waiting for more time and then we are faced with the reality of the troubling end. God immediately moves to first place. Oh, how I wish we could hold tightly to that knowledge in the days that follow despair.

 

We were a different country in the hours following 9/11. We were a different people. We loved God. We extended kindness to strangers. We met our neighbors. We focused on family. Suddenly all that we held dear – our jobs, our bank accounts, our social status – changed. We understood how fragile life is and exactly what we can and can’t take with us when we die.

 

Twenty years. That’s how much time has passed. It seems we’ve forgotten the lessons from that day. We’re an angry people. We believe life is all about us. We hold ourselves high, depending on our money and status to create a clear path to all our dreams. We’ve once again relegated God to an afterthought. We are once again an ungrateful people.

 

Oh, life occasionally hands us a reminder. We understand the frailty of life when the doctor tells us we have stage IV cancer and our days on earth are likely shorter than we planned. We remember how quickly our world can disintegrate when a phone call comes and we hear that someone we love has suddenly died. It’s the Covid death of someone once healthy and strong. It’s the child with brain cancer and the elderly person with dementia. It’s the layoffs and homeless, the outcast and the orphan. All reasons to remember how fragile and alone we are without God.

 

Most on this day share photos and remembrance of our own 9/11 memories. But the Walton County Sheriff’s Office went a little further. “What we must do is act; not just remember. Let it rattle your soul, not just flood your feed. For every post you put up, serve someone in your neighborhood. For every photo you share, call a friend you haven’t talked to in a while. For every comment you make today, find a 9/11 charity or non-profit and find out how to get involved. We must be United. And not just today. But, every day. That’s how we honor those we lost.”