Remembering......

Six years ago today I was sitting at the front desk of the busy legal department where I worked. I was feeling comfortable and confident. (After all I had been in the adult working world for fifteen months now!) One of my co-workers came running to the front and said "Have you heard? We're under attack!"

Those were words I simply could not get my mind around. Under attack? How could that possibly be? Immediately I thought back to Pearl Harbor (which I know about ONLY from history books, thank you very much). Those things didn't happen anymore, did they? We were America! Who would do that? My friend sat down at my desk and urged me to go to the conference room where a television was reporting the shocking news. I sat in that room, eyes glued to the screen, listening to reporters, listening to the shocked and angry remarks of the attorneys standing around me. Strange the words that came to my mind at that time. "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" I lived a naive, very sheltered, very Texas life. That the world was much bigger than that, filled with people who hated us for everything we stood for and most dumbfounding of all, did so in the name of the God they served was a revelation to me that morning. In a moment the world became far less safe and much more vast than I previously believed. And maybe for the first time ever I saw what a world without God looks like. Not the "oops" kinds of sins of which my world is made, but rather a world where the sacrifice God made for it is unknown or just denied.

The corporation I work for went into immediate lock down. Those outside couldn't get in, those inside couldn't get out. None of the things we were working on a few minutes earlier seemed at all important. No one wanted to be alone, everyone wanted to go home. Home where their loved ones were. Home where we had previously thought we were safe. Home where we could hide from terror and hate and destruction.

Maybe the most important lesson of all was this world is not our home.
"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going." John 14: 1-4