This day in history....

"A date which will live in infamy..." ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

President Roosevelt was speaking to the nation and the world regarding the events of December 7, 1941, when he spoke the above words....yet, those of us who lived through the events of September 11, 2001, could apply them to that date, as well.

National Parks picture

I have been thinking about those events, after reading through a note I wrote in 2011, when we were approaching the tenth anniversary of the hijacking of 4 airliners, the collapse of the World Trade Center, the destruction at the Pentagon, and the heroic measures of the passengers aboard the flight that crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

One of the realizations I had this morning is that we now have 14 years of children who do no know life prior to the increased security measures implemented since 9/11/01.  My oldest four children were 1, 3, 5, and 7 years old when the attacks happened.  Even the one who was 7, and is now 21, barely remembers life prior to the attacks.  I was 3 months pregnant when the attacks happened.  My now-13-year-old and my 11-year-old have no inkling at all of what life looked like prior to 9/11.

I have family who were freed from the concentration camps in Europe after World War II.

My father was inches from being drafted in Vietnam.

My father-in-law served on the ground war in freeing Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm.

I look back at those events with interest, but little horror, because I did not experience them.

I am certain that our children will do the same with 9/11 and the ensuing Second Gulf War.  It is inevitable.  It is how we survive, psychologically.

As humans, we were not created to experience sin, nor the results of sin.  And yet, because of Adam and Eve's original sin, we do not know life apart from the results of sin.  We suffer at the hands of others, we get sick, we die...all the result of sin.

And yet, we need to remember.  We need to be reminded regularly how life was prior to 9/11, and what changed, and all of the freedoms and lives that were taken as a result of the attack on our country.

We also need to be reminded, as believers, that our hope is not in our country, or in the comforts and freedoms we enjoy here, but our hope is found in the person of Jesus Christ, and the sacrifice He made for us so that we can experience a bigger and better freedom than any offered by this country we live in and love.