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9/11 Do We Remember?

September 11, 2006

I have a daily calendar sitting on my desk that gives a Scripture verse for every day. I turned to September 11th today and the verse was 2 Chronicles 7:14.

"If my peple, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." - 2 Chronicles 7:14

I have watched the different memorials on T.V. and I have heard the stories and watched the movies lately about 9/11. Each time I have asked myself "what are we looking for?" Why make movies about this tragic event? Why remember it and continue to look back at what happened? Why are we still so affected by the things that happened 5 years ago? What is it that we need? The answer is healing. We need this time and these years to heal from an event that hit us hard here at home. All of the things we see and all of the stories and memorials and events that help us remember the events of 9/11 is America's way of trying to heal.

Something I found interesting was the large amount of Church attendance that occured after 9/11. Suddenly people rush back to church in need of answers, protection, and maybe even comfort. When the routine of the world we live in is altered in any way it begins to scare people and it reveals the reality that we are not in control of this world. With 9/11 I think people were hit with the hard reality that it could have been them. Once that insecurity slipped into their otherwise secure and controlled environment, many rushed back to church. Unfortunatly this was a short lived phenomenon. Once the nation settled down a bit and people slipped back into their old routines and their old comfort zone, we see the shroud of control blind them once again. Now we sit back and "remember" 9/11 with the hopes that we will heal, grow stronger, and move forward with greater determination and pride.

Unfortunatly we are looking for healing in all the wrong places. We try to gather together and heal as a nation. We, once again, take on the idea that we can do it, that we some how have control. We have rushed out of the church just as quickly as we rushed into it on that day. Now we fight for healing and comfort when it has been available to us this whole time, in the one place we probably won't look. God.

If you humble yourselves and pray I will hear you and I will heal your land. If we are looking for healing we must look to God. Those who are called by His name, those who have been saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We need to be the ones on our knees on behalf of this nation praying that God would hear us and heal us. Like the rest of the nation, however, I believe we have so quickly forgotten.

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