Patriot Day. A holiday, but not really. We haven’t moved on to picnics and parades and special sales for this one yet because it is still pretty fresh for many of us. We watched it happen, and the picture of it will forever be in our minds.
Recently, I tried to describe to my fourteen-year-old son that September morning that seemingly changed everything for those of us who were alive then. I have heard it compared to our parents and grandparents telling us what it was like to hear President Kennedy was killed, but I think for us, it was even more. We all watched it happen in real time, and thousands of people were hurt and killed. I still remember the feeling of just not being able to breathe.
When I talked to my son about the day, there just weren’t words to describe all the emotion. He’ll never know those feelings – well, I hope he will never know. But I had to try. So, we talked about the deaths and the destruction and the planning that was involved, but we also read about the heroes and the helpers and, at least for a time, the unity that resulted from such an attack on us. He should know.
But I think there’s another sense in which that day was different. We learned in elementary school that the phrase “Remember the Alamo!” was used to rally the troops in Texas and that “Remember Pearl Harbor!” motivated our grandparents and great-grandparents to make sacrifices beyond the norm. As the anniversary of 9/11 approaches each year, we are reminded to “remember” the day. Remember both the pain and the deaths but also those who tried to help and to heal. But because of the nature of the attack and now, the time that has passed, we aren’t really rallying anybody to anything, and we aren’t hating and striking at all the people and the countries from which the attackers came.
So as my son was learning, I wondered what real value there is to “Remember 9/11.” Yes, we should commemorate the sacrifices made, that day and in the years following, and the so many innocent lives taken. But I can’t help thinking that what we see from that day, so starkly and so vividly, is that this world needs Jesus. There have been other just as evil events in world history but nothing so striking in our lifetimes. 9/11 shouts that there is immense evil in the world – but not just that. It reminds us that we cannot do much of anything about it. Jesus told His disciples that we would have tribulation in this world. He said that there will be wars and rumors of wars, bitterness and lawlessness, poverty and injustice. But He also said He has overcome the world. When He returns, He will come with great power and glory, and evil and pain like 9/11 will be remembered no more.
While we cannot prevent most of the evil that happens in our world, we can help people who are suffering here without the hope that it will all someday be better. Knowing only the evil without knowing true hope is an awful burden to live with. If you know the One who promises to make our burdens light, share Him with others.
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