As most Americans are today, I’m thinking back to September 11, 2001. I remember beginning to hear chatter in the office at work, so I got up and started walking around to try to figure out what was going on. One guy blurted, “They just flew a plane into the World Trade Center!”
My first thought was that it was some small prop plane, the pilot of which lost control and crashed into the building. The Internet exploded with the news, and seeing the smoke plume rising from the first tower quickly changed my mind about what had happened from ‘accident’ to ‘deliberate’. The second plane obviously only solidified it.
I saw a nation come together in prayer, compassion, and even like-mindedness.
It didn’t last.
There are many things I could say about the politics of this nation and how they’ve affected us, but I don’t believe that’s where the root of the problem is. The root of the problem is that as a nation, we’ve turned back from God again.
When we got to a point that we’d emotionally recovered (I realize many who this affected directly never will recover. I’m speaking of the nation in general.) from the greatest tragedy this country has seen in my lifetime, we decided God had done enough for us and we ended our dependence on Him. While we’ll ‘Never Forget’ what happened, we forgot Him.
It’s not surprising, but it’s disappointing. As we study through the Bible, we see Israel turning their back on God time and time again. Destruction, famine, and wars came. The great thing about those accounts are that every time Israel turned back to God, He showed mercy and forgiveness. They still dealt with the consequences of their sin, but healing had begun.
When we kill unborn children, promote same-sex marriage and lose more people to drugs and alcohol, no one can say that this isn’t a wicked nation. America has turned her back on God. If we loved the Lord and followed Him like we say we do, we’d never allow some of these things to go on.
While I think of the events of September 11, 2001, I cry for our nation who is begging for the judgment of God to fall on her!