It's been awhile, but I am back. A busy summer and the need to juggle my time in different ways, means that I haven't blogged in a while, but here I am today.
Thousands of blogs, newspaper articles, radio and television news shows will be asking the same question that Alan Jackson asks in his song - "Do you remember, where you were that day?"
We probably all can name where we were and what we were doing when that horrifying news came across the news wire -- America is under attack.
9-11- 2001: a day that will in part shape our lives together. And as horrible as that day was, it was not the first day like it, nor do I suspect it will be the last day like it. I think of my parents, who as they were happily engaged to be married, sat in front of radios one day and heard the news that America was under attack - Pearl Harbor had just been bombed. A day that forever changed their lives and quite possibly the course of what my life was like, not to mention the lives of countless others.
If we would go back in history, every generation had their terrorists - Osama bin Laden, Al Queda, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Castro, Tito, Genghis Khan, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Nero, Attila the Hun -- the list goes on and on.
It's not that 9-11 is any less horrible because there have been other days like it, it's just that violence is nothing new in this world. There have always been those who have sought power at the price of the lives of the innocents.
The question is not whether there will be despots in the world that engage in evil atrocities. The question is, that as followers of the Christ, how should we respond? Jesus teaches us, "Happy are those who work for peace, God will call them his children!" -- Matthew 5:9.
Or in the words of Desmond Tutu,
Goodness is stronger than evil,
love is stronger than hate,
light is stronger than darkness,
life is stronger than death,
victory is ours through him who loved us
May we all allow God's peace to dwell in us more fully, so that we might work for peace in the world.
By God's Grace,
Michelle
