Remembering

I'm finding that before I can head to bed, I need to process for a minute what today has been for me. Like most Americans, I have spent at least part of the day remembering the attack on our country 10 years ago. It was my first experience of feeling unsafe in my own country, wondering if further attacks were forthcoming. Hamp was in Chicago at a printing trade show and it took him several days to get home since air travel had been halted. While he was never in harm's way, having normal life interrupted in such a way underscored the point that life in America as we knew it had changed forever. An innocence was taken and while not necessarily a bad thing, a forced growing up in any capacity can leave scars.

When we stop to remember anything - good or bad - it seems that usually pictures or symbols of some kind do what words sometimes cannot. All of us probably have images in our mind of what 9/11 was to us, but one that particularly stood out to me was this picture.

I suppose I could be accused of not wanting to deal with the graphic reality of the day, but I think this picture does that well. While covered in dust from the debris in the air and standing on rubble that possibly has entombed some of their own, they still chose to make a statement of hope. America had been attacked and many were lost, but those who remained were standing together in a new-found commonality to face together what might lie ahead.

And then it occurred to me this morning that God left us a similar reminder in the last hours of Jesus' life here on earth.

Mankind had been attacked centuries before in a garden of perfection by the enemy of the Creator. Just like ten years ago in America, the ripples from that first attack have taken out more than just the original target. Yet, in the midst of the pain and suffering, we were given a symbol of hope in which to remember the only One who could save us from our enemy. A broken body and spilled blood remind us that our Savior came, lived, died, and rose again and that He will come again and all will finally be as it should. With that hope, we're to encourage one another to not lose heart and to remember that this is actually not as good as it gets.

While not perfect, America has gotten it right often down through the years. I, for one, am still praying that we remember again before it's too late.