Twelve Years Today

There are moments in life that are seared into our brains, never to be forgotten. For those old enough to remember these are things like Pearl Harbor Day, JFK's assassination, Columbine, or the World Trade Center Bombing. For those who are lucky enough to have lived them there are other kind of memories, like your wedding day, the day you first held that precious baby in your arms, the day you came to know the Lord as your savior or that day you had to say good-bye to a loved one. These are the days that we remember, days that we swear at the time we will never forget.
This was the mantra of that day twelve years ago, do you remember what our nation cried out? "Never Forget". And yet some people want to. Please understand that I'm not condemning these people, in fact I understand exactly where they're coming from. As a flawed human race we don't want to dwell on tragedy, we'd rather move on to all that's good in life but as Sir Winston Churchill once said "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." If we let today slip by without so much as a thought or a moment of prayer for those thousands of lives lost what kind of people does that make us? What does that say about our country?
Today I want to challenge you, as you go about your normal, everyday life to take a moment and let yourself remember what happened twelve years ago. To pray for the families of those brave men and women who gave up their lives both in New York City, D.C. and in Pennsylvania where
they're brave actions kept those terrorists from furthering their plan. Pray for our military men and women who are still out there, still fighting against the evil that attacked our country. And pray for our country, this great land of the brave and home of the free that so many have laid their lives down for, not such twelve years ago but over and over again throughout the years since this great nation was first founded. Above all I ask that you would pray for each other, that we, as a nation and as individuals  would never forget.
I can still remember what I was doing that day when I first heard the news. I was with my mom and brother in our van and we heard the news on the radio but it wasn't until I got to school and our teacher explained the situation that I began to grasp the seriousness of this awful day. Even now as I write this I can see the image of those planes running into the Towers. I've been to Washington D.C. and I saw the Pentagon where the plane hit. I can tell you exactly what I was doing when I first heard the news that after ten years one of the men who orchestrated these attacks, Osama bin Laden, had been killed. I remember these things as if they had just happened, and I choose not to forget, not to dishonor the heroes of 9/11 that way. These men and women didn't wake up on September 11th, 2001 and just decide they would lay down their lives for their country but when the time came they made a choice that might be best described in the words of Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death!" They believed in this country and they believed in what it stood for, now the question is do we?