As you all know, today marks 22 years. There probably isn’t one of us who does not remember where we were twenty two years ago.  I can still remember the awful taste of raw shock I felt after seeing those first images of the towers burning.  The news only got worse as the day dragged on.  The collapse.  Then another.  People covered in dust and blood, appearing shell-shocked.  One plane down.  Then another.  Fire and smoke.  Dust and debris.  Blood and tears.

I remember the emotion. The unsettling realization that families had been devastated.  Their fathers wouldn’t come home.  Their mothers would never kiss their children’s faces again.  The sons and daughters and grandparents who went to work that morning, not realizing that the day would ultimately divide our nation’s history, as few other events have, into “pre-9/11” and “post-9/11”. More importantly, they simply went to work not realizing that they would not come home.  Instead, they would slip from their office chairs, right into eternity.

Today, we remember them. We pray for their families, but we also thank God for the freedom we have that came under attack from evil people that day.

I don’t want to over-spiritualize things, but I do want to point out two spiritual truths as we go about our day today.

This Day, Even This Moment, Could Be Your Last

What would your legacy be if this day was your last?  What impact would you leave?  What would people say at your eulogy?  If today is not your last, then tomorrow is your first opportunity to make the answers to these questions really matter.  My prayer for my own life would be that people would say I made a difference in their lives in a way that helped them know Jesus and make Jesus known.  I want to be remembered for being like him and helping others know him.  That’s my prayer for you, too.

There Was Another Day that Divided History, Too

The concept that Jesus died on a cross has become so common in our post-modern American lives that the idea doesn’t shock us anymore, but it was a concept so radical that it divided history into “before Christ” and “The Year of Our Lord”.

The idea that God, Himself, would die for a sinful people who disobeyed his very commands is just radical.  It is crazy.  It was also violent.  There was blood and tears.  It was a mess.  And not unlike our 9/11, the emotion and shock of that day and subsequent days and years, was raw and thick.  Watching the movie The Passion of the Christ was a great visual of this for me, and I pray that I will always be able to access the emotion that film stirred in me.  Christ’s death was the spiritual version of 9/11, but on a much grander scale because it’s implications reverberated through eternity.

So where does that leave us?  My prayer is that as we remember the awful events of 9/11, that we would redeem the tragic gravity of that day by making it a day where we remember what Christ did for us on the cross:  God died to make His enemies His friends. I pray that we consider the implications of that wonderful, improbable fact.  How will it change what you do today, where you go, what you say, how you worship, what your eyes see, what your hands do, and what your mouth says?

Redeem this day by making it the first day where you choose to live more for God’s eternal Kingdom than you did yesterday.

Lord, as we remember the lives lost twenty two years ago, we pray for their families and ask that you would still give them a very real sense of your presence.  May you use the awful events of that day for your glory by turning them, us, and our nation to you.  May we never lose sight of the incredible fact that you died to redeem us to you.  May that fact radically transform our hearts.  Help us to make a difference in eternity by what we do on this earth today.  In Christ’s name, Amen.