9-11

We just experienced the 10 year mark (hard to call it an anniversary) of one of the most awful things I can recall in my lifetime.  I remember the day in 2001 vividly as well as how I felt and the gamut of emotions I experienced.  It's not a pleasant memory.  Therefore, when the news media started all the hype and build-up about the 10 year thing, it made me want to go hide my head in the sand.  All the news features, documentaries, pictures, first person accounts, even sermons commemorating that day gave me cause to wish desperately it was all over.  I'm not the least bit interested in reliving that day, seeing the horrific pictures and videos, listening to all the pain and suffering revisited, even honoring the heros.  I would just as soon skip it as go back and experience all that again.  When the TV in our house was spouting all the "specials" the afternoon of the 11th, I was in another room.  I didn't want to see, hear or feel and couldn't understand why anyone else did either.
Then, like the proverbial ton of bricks, it hit me.  It wasn't that anyone wanted to go back to that day 10 years ago or feel the same emotions again - it was that we have to.  We can't ever allow ourselves to forget.  If we forget, all the things that happened that day lose their meaning and purpose.  We have to remember, fight back, honor, even cherish those moments in our nations history.  If we don't, it was all in vain.  It is the same way with Jesus on the cross.  Every Easter season I dread the descriptions I am sure to hear of Jesus' suffering and the horrible things that were done to Him before and after He was crucified.  I closed my eyes through most of it the first time I watched The Passion, but I did recognize the importance of why were seeing it.  By His stripes we are healed.  The emotion it evokes in me is secondary to the reason it happened.  I can't avoid the emotion without avoiding the reason and therefore I do not dare to do so.  I have to bring it out each Easter, relive it, re-feel it and let the miracle of my salvation pervade my entire being.  If I don't, what Christ did for me loses its enormity and I lose track of how much He loves me, all so I can avoid feeling the pain.
Remembering 9/11 as horrendous as it was, is minuscule when compared to the cross.
Remember - Never Forget what Jesus did for you and me.