For the seventh time our nation has “remembered” that fatal day in September of 2001. It was a time when fear and anger gripped our thoughts, the feelings of all of us. As a nation, we had not experienced that kind of threat against our cities that many nations of the world have come to see as almost an everyday fare. Suddenly our major cities were not a safe harbor for our citizens. What others have known on a regular basis now had invaded own window of experience.
Many words have been spoken and written these seven years about those tragic hours. One subject that has been discussed over and over is that of complacency. Smug “confidence” often is the result of perceived safety, and over-confidence comes when we forget past dangers.
Going back to a traumatic era of history brings back words that approach the very subject most urgently at hand.
Almost exactly 70 years ago, in September of 1940, London was under siege by the German Luftwaffe. It was a terrifying time as families were separated, homes destroyed, nights spent in underground shelters for days on end, and the scream of falling bombs became a commonplace experience. Please read the following haunting editorial quoted from a London daily newspaper. Ironically, these words were written on September 11, 1940:
“We have been a pleasure-loving people, dishonoring the Lord’s Day, picnicking and boating. We have preferred motor travel to church going. Now there is a shortage of motor fuel.
We have ignored the ringing of church bells calling us to worship, and now the same bells ring to warn us of the danger of invasion.
We have left the church buildings half empty when they should have been filled with worshipers. Now, many of them lay smoking in ruins.
The food for which we refused to give thanks is now rationed or unobtainable. The money we would not give for the Lord’s work is now taken from us in higher taxes and higher prices.
The service we refused to give God is now conscripted for our country’s protection. We did not send the Gospel to those embracing Godless ideologies. Now, we send out men to kill those people for believing what they were taught while we were sitting at home enjoying modern comforts and conveniences.
Too late England realized just how self-centered she had been to ignore the more important matters while she was “enjoying life.” Can we honestly deny that we have, in similar ways, ignored the lost of the very nations from which these deeds were planned and perpetrated against us on September 11, 2001? There is no question that America has become a “pleasure-loving, people, dishonoring the Lord’s Day.” But what about the Lord’s people? Have we not, along with many others, been blissfully unaware of, or unconcerned about taking the gospel to “those embracing godless ideologies,” and now are sending “men to kill those people for believing what they were taught”?
One motive rests behind that question, and that is the fact that millions upon millions have never heard the gospel. They have heard of Mohammed and Allah, and they have heard the doctrines appropriate to those “deities.”
Many are saying that those – and more recent events – as well as others, should serve as a “wake-up call” to America, and it is hard to disagree. Must we not also awaken to our responsibility to take the gospel to the lost of all nations? What must we give up in order to do so? That will depend upon our willingness to do so. It can start with our neighbor. Can it start with you and me and the rest of us?
The appropriate question for today asks, “How do we so prepare that such an attack cannot take us by surprise again?” The coming election will be one of the most important we have faced in years. This is not the time for us to ignore or forget the past. We
must “remember” so the future can be brighter and Christ will be glorified!
