The Flog – The Fabry Log

Seven years ago our lives, our worldview changed. Our view of the enemy. Our view of our country. Our view of ourselves. It all changed on that bright, September morning.

Did it change us enough? Today we’re going to hear from you about that.

Most of society just wants to be entertained. From sports contests to the latest scandal, we rush to see the latest pop culture news. We turn away from problems, the deep issues that enslave us, and turn to something easier to deal with.

On that day 7 years ago, only a few people rushed toward the problem. Most of us ran from it and watched from afar. Most of us covered our mouths, pictured ourselves in those towers or on that plane heading for the Pentagon, or the aircraft that was turning and heading for Washington. The one that crashed in Pennsylvania. The people in those planes and in those buildings who lost their lives, who were thrust into eternity in those horrifying moments of explosion and fire, or collapse of the world around them, those people had their lives unalterably changed forever.

They were killed. We have been inconvenienced. We now call $4 a gallon gasoline a crisis. And certainly, I don’t like to pay $4 for a gallon of gas anymore than you do. It hurts the economy. It hurts my pocketbook. But compare and contrast that day 7 years ago with what we’re going through.

So tell me today, what changes you have seen in your life? Did September 11 change the way you look at elections? It has for me. I’ve always believed we needed a strong military presence to be able to fight the forces of tyranny. But I also believe we need a strong, moral center to our nation, and it is that moral center which informs all of our activities. Our military, our judges, our representatives, our corporate heads, our teachers, our servants. Without that moral center, we simply become a nation of opinion polls. Our objective standards dwindle, and we wind up watching TV and shaking our heads about what we’re up against.

As some have said, if you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything.

And fall we did on 9-11. We were paralyzed by the shock of what we were seeing. People jumping to their deaths. Buildings that were supposed to be indestructible collapsing on top of themselves. People running in terror, while our enemies danced and celebrated.

But we did not stay down long. From every corner of this country, men and women banded together. And that is the American spirit. That is something that could not be changed by 19 deranged fanatics who believed their deaths would serve a heavenly cause. People saw the need and they volunteered—without leaders in government telling us we should. They served. They fed the hungry. They grieved with family members. They worked clearing debris, at great cost to their own health, because there was a chance that another person was still alive under all that concrete and metal.

We learned about heroes that day. Men and women who ran headlong into buildings or cockpits or burning rubble in order to save people they did not even know. We learned that we have real enemies. We learned that people of different political stripes could come together. At least for a week or two.

We also learned we were vulnerable. That a great nation, a melting pot of so many people of different backgrounds and races and religions and from every part of the planet, we learned we were vulnerable to a relatively small group of people bent on our destruction.

And perhaps this is my greatest concern. That we have been lulled into complacency again. That the roots of change in our collective lives have not grown sufficiently deep enough. I hope you can allay those concerns today.

I had lived in Colorado for only a year in 2001. I had become a Denver Broncos fan. And on September 10th, Ed McCaffrey, a wide receiver for the Broncos was tackled in a Monday Night game and sickeningly his leg was broken and he was carted off the field. It ended his season. And I woke up that next morning thinking about Ed McCaffrey and what a terrible thing had happened to him. And how awful for the Broncos that this player wouldn’t be able to play.

The events of that day changed that perspective. It caused me to see how close to eternity you and I are every day. And I live with a sense of awe that we do have people who will run to the problem instead of away. We do have people who are willing to serve and protect us, even to the potential loss of their lives. Do we deserve such people? I don’t know that you can ever deserve that kind of courage and bravery and heroism. The kind that was evidenced on 9-11. I don’t know that we deserve the kind of servants we have in our military who right now are in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t know if we deserve the heroes from World War II who ran up Omaha beach. Does anyone deserve that? Does anyone have a RIGHT to ask of another, put your life in front of me to keep me from danger. Give your life in my place.

It is not a right. It is a privilege we have to live in this country.

And here is what I am most encouraged about in this remembrance. That privilege is a metaphor of actions by God Himself, when he, with perfect knowledge of what was to come, stepped out of heaven and took our place and gave his life that we might be free. That we might be forgiven. That we might become citizens of heaven. For it was into this terror filled world of sin and darkness, that Jesus came and gave himself. He did not HAVE to do it. But in his love and mercy, he was constrained by his own promise, his own plan, to not only step into our world, but to change it one heart, one soul at a time.

I feel, at times, the same complacency when I look at that rescue mission. That I take this for granted. That I am not doing as much as I could. And days like this that commemorate both death and destruction, as well as life and courage, remind me that we have a much bigger task than an election or a Supreme Court Justice or a righteous cause to pursue, as important as those are. The greatest task given to us as His followers, is to run toward the problems of this world, to run toward the people who do not know they can be free, who have not yet embraced this savior, who need to know there can truly be change that will last forever.