REMEMBERING SEPTEMBER 11TH

When I was growing up I remember my parents talking about Pearl Harbor. For my parents born in the 1920’s Pearl Harbor and then the assassination of President John Kennedy were the defining moments of their lives. My parents could both tell you exactly where they were at and what they were doing when they heard about those horrible events. It was seared into their memory. I remember listening to their stories of how they reacted to it and what happened as a result of it in their lives. Pearl Harbor literally turned their lives upside down. My dad would end up joining the Navy and spending time in the Pacific and on the island of Okinawa. My mother would marry a man who would go into the Army and would learn to grow up fast. The results of World War II would remake our nation and my parents lives would be shaped forever by those events. Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination were unifying events for us as a nation. Everyone it seemed was affected in some way and everyone came together as one. After those events it seemed another event of great magnitude would never happen to us again as a nation. There was of course the Korean War and the Vietnam War but neither of them had a huge national event that unified the nation. There was also the landing on the moon but it didn’t really unify people or bring them together. There was the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan but he survived. There was the shuttle blowing up on takeoff in the mid 1980’s but nothing of the magnitude of Pearl Harbor or John Kennedy.
Then 911 happened. Like Pearl Harbor it felt like a punch in the gut to the nation as a whole. The vast majority of Americans were nowhere near the tragic events that unfolded that day and yet we all felt like it was in some way aimed at us. The real time coverage of the event made it even more so. I like you remember the events of that morning in very clear detail. It was a Tuesday morning and I was living in Fort Wayne Indiana. My wife had already gone to work and normally I would have been in my office at the time as well, but I woke up with a sore throat and decided to stay home for awhile. I had just sat down on the couch and turned on the TV. Katie Couric was about to sign off on the morning show when she announced that a plane had just crashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York. They began to show live video of the smoke coming out of the building and starting talking about how it must have been a small cargo plane. Suddenly right over Couric’s shoulder on the video screen I watched live as the second plane crashed into the next tower. It was then that we all realized this was not an accident. I watched the TV for several more hours that morning as the nation went into panic mode, as another plane flew into the Pentagon and yet another went down in field in Pennsylvania and as both of the towers went down. I don’t think I even went to the bathroom that morning and at times wondered if what I was watching was actually real. Could such a horrendous thing as this actually be happening? I eventually went to work that day but there was no escaping it. The videos, the pictures were everywhere. I don’t think any of us knew what was going to happen, if this was the end of it or if there was more coming, but we did all know one thing, our lives would never be the same again. There was a bad wind blowing and we could feel it we just didn’t know what the ending result would be.
Ten years have now passed since that tragic day and how our country and our world has changed. Even if you were not close to the events of that day, and even if you didn’t know someone who died that day, in the last ten years you have been personally touched in some way by the events that followed. Around five thousand Americans have been killed in the war against terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan and several other places, and many times that have been wounded. I think everyone in the country knows someone who has served in harm’s way in the last ten years. How we travel has drastically changed. I find now when I tell a story about travel by air I have to say this was before or after 911 because getting from point A to point B on a plane anymore is very different. Security for public events is also very different and how we view other people has changed. We are not as trusting as we once were. This Sunday at Family of Christ we want to recognize that and the sacrifices that have been made by so many over the past ten years. Therefore we are holding a special service at our regular time of 9:30 a.m. that will be a service of remembrance and also a service of worship of the God who has sustained us over these years. There will be special videos and our school kids will be singing God Bless America. So we invite you to join us this Sunday as we take a moment to think about those who have given so much.

Pastor Fred