It has only been eighteen years. The country was blindsided by a cowardly man who somehow managed to manipulate his ‘followers’ to do the nasty work he was afraid to do himself. Fly planes into towers and kill people. It was a statement. If they just wanted to kill a bunch of people, they could have flown just one plane into an NFL stadium on gameday and 10s of thousands would have died. But that wouldn’t have been a big enough statement. But, take out the twin towers and the Pentagon and whatever the target was for the plane the passengers tried to retake and that crashed in Pennsylvania. That was a statement.

          As a nation, we rose to the occasion. I remember the shock and grief, but it was mixed with a growing pride. People running away from the falling buildings, as they should have been doing, but police and firefighters and EMTs running towards the buildings to try and save lives. At the Pentagon, the generals and colonels and admirals and captains and staffers who had all grown comfortable in their roles in the biggest office building in the world all of a sudden reverted to the soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines they had started out as in their military lives. A man from the community I pastored in was visiting the Pentagon with his wife. Their son had just been transferred there and they were walking down a hall when that plane slammed into the building. This man told me that immediately military efficiency took over. He told me that if there was any panic, he didn’t see it. The entire nation was energized. Less than a year before a hotly contested presidential contest had divided the country. (Remember Florida’s hanging chad problem?) But, suddenly, the Republican president was accepted as the President of all the United States. And we were united.

          Eighteen years later. Where are we?

          A grossly divided country. Personally, I have no problem with lawmakers who are Muslim, so long as they recognize and promote American values and ideals. What we have are Islamic lawmakers who want to install Islamic law. I have no problem with people who disagree with me politically. That is what we are built upon. But when those people would rather see me dead than at the ballot box, then that is a problem. And when a major news source, in their remembrance of a national tragedy just eighteen years after the fact, never mentions that the planes that were flown into the twin towers and the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania that the hijackers were radical Islamics are engaging in a history rewrite, that is just wrong. Their reporting made it sound as though the planes did the attack, just as their reporting makes it sound as though it is the gun’s fault in a mass shooting.

          Eighteen years later. Where are we?

          We are in a bad way. Eighteen years ago we rallied behind the flag. Nothing wrong with that, not at all. But more was needed. There were voices calling out for it, but those voices were mostly ignored. However, if those voices had been heeded, even just a little bit, we would be living in a different country.

           It is common in our country to hear someone shout, “We have the right!” And that is true. This is the United States of America. We have rights. A video is out there of American children whacking away at a piñata, seeking to break it open so that they could get to the candy inside. The piñata was made to look like the president of the United States. The parents of the children stood around shooting video and laughing and cheering on their little ones as they taught the lesson of disrespect. But they have that right. Another video. A FedEx driver heroically shoulders his way into the middle of a protest to save an American flag from being burned. He had a right to do so and, apparently now, the protester had the right to burn the flag. We all have rights, or think we do. But we have neglected the most important right of all. The very thing that would have really changed things eighteen years ago.

I know I go on and on about this, but I am a Christian first and foremost. If I am a good Christian I will be a good American. So, the Bible is my one essential in life. I read the Bible daily and I also read the Constitution of the United States through yearly. The precepts in the Constitution emerge from the Bible. And this I find in the Word of God;

          2 Chronicles 7:12-15---Then the LORD appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him: "I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land. Why have we turned our backs on being humble before the Lord? Why have we turned our backs on praying to Him and seeking Him out? Why have we turned our backs on righteous living and instead chosen evil? If we had listened to those voices crying out eighteen years ago to turn back to Him, we would not be in the mess we are in now.