I’m writing this blog post on the 17th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. An attack on the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and a fourth plane that was taken down by passengers before it could reach the White House. That terrorist attack took the lives of more than 3,000 people (over 400 of them were first responders). Vivid memories come back to me of that quiet Tuesday morning when so many lives were changed forever and our nation was shaken to its very core.
I was at a mall that morning training two new employees in pest control. When we entered a restaurant to provide service before they opened for business, we found all of the employees in front of the big screen TV in the bar. We watched with them as the second plane hit the other tower and the first tower began to collapse. Local news broke in saying the Sears Tower in Chicago was being evacuated and suddenly it all began to hit closer to home. We got back to my office in Chicago as quickly as possible and cut our training session short for the day. The shock and deep sadness I felt that day reminded me so much of when, as a 20 year old Air Force sergeant on leave to get married, I got word of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, my beloved Commander in Chief.
There are two things that stand out in my mind about that day in 2001 and the days that followed. The first is how we were drawn closer together as Americans. As I watched the news on TV with coworkers before we headed home to be with our families, a black friend who was service manager at that office said almost under his breath, “We are all in this together.” That summed up the way political, racial and ethnic divides seem to disappear at least for a while after that tragedy. The second thing that happened is that people began to turn to God for solace, assurance and protection. Churches began to fill again as people were reminded of how fragile life is and how much we need God in this life and in the next.
It is hard for me to imagine that there are teenagers who weren’t even born yet on September 11, 2001. It is even harder for me to grasp that anyone under 55 was not born when that sad news came from Dallas on November 22, 1963. Because so many of us have no memory or have forgotten those events, the things that separate us have widened once more and many people have drifted away from God again. Christians throughout our nation must pray earnestly that it doesn’t take an even greater tragedy to draw us closer to God and to each other once more.