Everybody gets one. A day so fixed in your head that you remember the temperature, what you were wearing, what you were eating, who was sitting next to you. For my parents it was Kennedy. For the generation just ahead of me it was Challenger, watching it come apart on live television in a classroom.
Mine was a 50-piece nugget on a late arrival day.
I was a senior in high school. I was sitting with a friend I had known since kindergarten, who is in heaven now. And something came over the radio about a plane hitting a tower.
Was it an accident? Was it worse than that? Is anybody okay? What are they even talking about?
We got to school and almost every classroom had a television on. No lesson plan. Just live news, and the whole thing unfolding in front of us in real time.
That night the sky was completely quiet. No contrails, no lights moving, nothing. Just stars and the moon. I had never seen a sky like that before and I have not seen one since.
What just happened.
The Part I Set Alarms For
Thousands of people died that day. Many more died in the twenty years of war that followed. And there are people still dying from what they breathed in standing on that pile, which most of us never count.
Twenty-five years later, I can’t stand at a ceremony. I’m going to be somewhere between a shipper and a receiver with a load on. So I keep the day a different way.
I have alarms set in my phone.
8:46 a.m. North tower struck.
9:03 a.m. South tower struck.
9:37 a.m. Pentagon struck.
9:59 a.m. South tower fell.
10:03 a.m. Flight 93 goes into a field in Pennsylvania.
10:28 a.m. North tower fell.
5:20 p.m. Building 7 fell.
Seven alarms. Most of them go off while I’m rolling. The interstate doesn’t stop for any of them. Traffic keeps moving, the load still has to get there, and nobody in the lane next to me knows what my phone just did.
But I know. And for about ten seconds each time, that cab is quiet.
Why This Is on a Christian Publication
Fair question. Here’s the answer.
God takes what the enemy meant for evil and uses it for good. Every time.
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good. He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.”
Genesis 50:20
“And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”
Romans 8:28
God used it for good.
For the first time in my life, this country came back together. Flags on every porch. People giving blood in lines around the block. Strangers being decent to each other for no reason. Was everybody treated right in those months? No. There were people who got persecuted for how they looked and where their family came from, and that was wrong, and I’m not going to sit here and justify it.
But we were as united as I have ever seen us.
Twenty-Five Years Later
I’m forty-three now. And in all forty-three of those years, I have never seen this country more divided than it is right now.
The enemy is still the enemy. He was working that morning and he is working right now, and division is one of his favorite tools because he doesn’t have to knock anything down to use it. He just has to get us looking at each other instead of at God.
“Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land.”
2 Chronicles 7:14
A Prayer for Today
Heavenly Father,
Twenty-five years ago today a lot of people went home to you, and a lot more followed over the two decades after. I pray they are with you. I pray their families have found comfort, and refuge, and solace in you, because there isn’t anywhere else to find it.
Father God, in Jesus’ name, I pray that you bring us back together as a nation. We need you more than we have needed you in a long time, and most of us haven’t admitted that out loud yet.
I pray for the families who are marking today without somebody. I pray for the ones we lost. And I pray for all of us who are still here and still moving forward.
In Jesus’ most holy name, Amen.
What do you remember from today? What was your experience like?