Never. Forget. 9/11 Thoughts 14 Years Later

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This picture is the World Trade Center on 9/11 14 years ago.

It reminds me to... Never Forget. The cost of innocent American lives continues to overwhelm me. This horrifying picture shows the cost in human lives inflicted by those who hate us. I still hurt from that fateful day. Please, America, the reason we must never forget is because we are still on the cross hairs, and those we love may be next.

Freedom is worth defending. We must never bow to the tyranny of those who would enjoy nothing more than fundamentally transforming us, both foreign and domestic.

Finally, thank you to those men and women, young and old, who gave up family, time, health, limbs, and many, their lives to protect our country. We must not let them down now.

"O beautiful for glory-tale Of liberating strife,

When once or twice, for man's avail, MEN LAVISHED PRECIOUS LIFE!

America! America! God shed His grace on thee

Till selfish gain no longer stain, The banner of the free!"

-- from America the Beautiful, Katharine Lee Bates, July 4, 1895

 

 

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Woman Killed for a Hoax

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According to an ABC news article, a woman was killed after she was to be questioned by police after allegedly sending a "hoax WMD package to a republican New York state senator."

The article continues:

"a female (who was armed with a knife and handgun) opened (the door) and began assaulting an officer with the weapons." In spite of the attack, the officer was able to access his service revolver and stop the woman from continuing the assault. The officer sustained non-life threatening injuries, and the woman, identified as Jameela Barnette, was killed.

No matter what the circumstances are that surround such a tragedy, it is always hard to deal with death, particularly around Christmas. Death is such a final word that evokes deep and hurtful memories.

The sad thing is that we live as if we have hundreds of years to live when in actuality, there is no promise that I will finish the next w o r d in this sentence. That is the hoax we believe. Somehow we actually think that life...for us...never ends.

Geof Kimber, a musician friend of mine, wrote these words:

"It's not that life is so short, it's just that death is so long."

If there is anything that our family has learned over these last 8 years, it is that life is riddled with unexpected events. In August of 2003, I went to church on a Sunday morning with no inkling that my life would all but end on the floor of a theater in Mount Pleasant, SC. I had suffered a dissected aorta that nearly ended my life and drastically changed my quality of life.

When that year began, it was like any other. We shot fireworks at the stroke of midnight on New Years Day; we planned for and secured a building for our church; and we even celebrated my 43rd birthday with all the boring jokes about my life being over... never even thinking that nearly 7 weeks later I would be lying in ICU at Roper Hospital fighting for my life.

As we begin a new year, I have renewed my commitment to live each day, wait, let me change that... each moment as if if was my last. The Psalmist understood that lifestyle more than most would care or consider:

Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts. (Psalm 90:12 HCSB)

Lord, this year, each moment, teach me.

Pastor Trey Rhodes