faith unfaded

We’ve been so busy prepping for a hurricane in Louisiana, the memories of another September event weighing heavily on our minds, that today has been a bit of an afterthought.

We once thought it would never be forgotten. But life moves on and those who weren’t directly affected by 9/11 won’t approach the day of remembrance in quite the same way.

But we should all remember.

Our nation was under attack. Our citizens were killed. We lost fathers, mothers, children, neighbors. First responders died trying to save those trapped in the Twin Towers. Passengers died as heroes thwarted an attempt to crash into the Pentagon.

On September 11, 2011, I was teaching a class of nine-year olds in Oklahoma. None of them were aware of the tragic events of that day in 2001. We spent the next two weeks discussing landmarks and freedom and heroes during Social Studies. They wrote letters to fallen responders’ families during Language Arts. They listened to patriotic poetry during Reading.

They needed to understand freedom. They needed to appreciate it. We can never take it for granted.

Election years hurt my soul in a way like no other. I have to imagine God feels the same way. We turn it into a Civil War, brother against brother. Neighbor against neighbor.

We seem to have forgotten how we put aside our differences when our nation was under attack. How we mailed thousands of boots to ABC News when Peter Jennings refused to let Toby Keith sing “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” at a 9/11 Tribute concert because the line We’ll put a boot in your a— sent the wrong message.

We knew the message we wanted to send other countries: “You mess with the bull, you get the horns.”

Now we are so busy goring each other that this nation will bleed out all on its own.

A house divided cannot stand.

Know who said that? Abraham Lincoln, during the Civil War.

But also God, in Matthew 12:25.

Today, of all days, remember September 11. Remember those who died for US. That’s the United States as well as you and me.

You can take UNDER GOD out of the Pledge of Allegiance. You can take the Pledge of Allegiance out of our schools. You can even take God out of your own heart.

But you cannot take God out of this world.
(Isaiah 40:17)