Posted on 09/14/2001 10:50:24 AM PDT by Bommer
We are here in the middle hour of our grief. So many have suffered so great a loss, and today we express our nation's sorrow. We come before God to pray for the missing and the dead, and for those who loved them.
On Tuesday, our country was attacked with deliberate and massive cruelty. We have seen the images of fire and ashes and bent steel.
Now come the names, the list of casualties we are only beginning. They are the names of men and women who began their day at a desk or in an airport, busy with life. They are the names of people who faced death and in their last moments called home to say, be brave and I love you.
They are the names of passengers who defied their murderers and prevented the murder of others on the ground. They are the names of men and women who wore the uniform of the United States and died at their posts.
They are the names of rescuers -- the ones whom death found running up the stairs and into the fires to help others. We will read all these names. We will linger over them and learn their stories, and many Americans will weep.
To the children and parents and spouses and families and friends of the lost, we offer the deepest sympathy of the nation. And I assure you, you are not alone.
Just three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of history, but our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.
War has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder.
This nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun on the timing and terms of others; it will end in a way and at an hour of our choosing.
Our purpose as a nation is firm, yet our wounds as a people are recent and unhealed and lead us to pray. In many of our prayers this week, there's a searching and an honesty. At St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, on Tuesday, a woman said, "I pray to God to give us a sign that he's still here."
Others have prayed for the same, searching hospital to hospital, carrying pictures of those still missing.
God's signs are not always the ones we look for. We learn in tragedy that his purposes are not always our own, yet the prayers of private suffering, whether in our homes or in this great cathedral are known and heard and understood.
There are prayers that help us last through the day or endure the night. There are prayers of friends and strangers that give us strength for the journey, and there are prayers that yield our will to a will greater than our own.
This world He created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds all who die and all who mourn.
It is said that adversity introduces us to ourselves.
This is true of a nation as well. In this trial, we have been reminded and the world has seen that our fellow Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave.
We see our national character in rescuers working past exhaustion, in long lines of blood donors, in thousands of citizens who have asked to work and serve in any way possible. And we have seen our national character in eloquent acts of sacrifice. Inside the World Trade Center, one man who could have saved himself stayed until the end and at the side of his quadriplegic friend. A beloved priest died giving the last rites to a firefighter. Two office workers, finding a disabled stranger, carried her down 68 floors to safety.
A group of men drove through the night from Dallas to Washington to bring skin grafts for burned victims. In these acts and many others, Americans showed a deep commitment to one another and in an abiding love for our country.
Today, we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called, "the warm courage of national unity." This is a unity of every faith and every background. This has joined together political parties and both houses of Congress. It is evident in services of prayer and candlelight vigils and American flags, which are displayed in pride and waved in defiance. Our unity is a kinship of grief and a steadfast resolve to prevail against our enemies. And this unity against terror is now extending across the world.
America is a nation full of good fortune, with so much to be grateful for, but we are not spared from suffering. In every generation, the world has produced enemies of human freedom. They have attacked America because we are freedom's home and defender, and the commitment of our fathers is now the calling of our time.
On this national day of prayer and remembrance, we ask almighty God to watch over our nation and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come. We pray that He will comfort and console those who now walk in sorrow. We thank Him for each life we now must mourn, and the promise of a life to come.
As we've been assured, neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth can separate us from God's love.
May He bless the souls of the departed. May He comfort our own. And may He always guide our country.
God bless America.
As they exited the church with the bells tolling all that came to my mind was "Ask not for whom the bells toll, they toll for thee".
Tell your father that he wasn't listening very carefully. Billy Graham talked clearly about Jesus' death on the cross for our sins, and the Resurrection.
God was glorified in this service, and the President's faith in Jesus Christ was abundantly clear!
Joy is an elusive thing to crusty old fundamentalists.....which may explain why so many of their children rebelled and turned away from God, and we lost most of a generation. I'm glad you didn't though, and that you feel the joy in having a brother in Christ as our President!
It's absolutely wonderful!
There's the word I've been looking for, Billie.............perfect!!
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:38-39
How wonderful to have a man of faith, instead of one that uses only the words.
God Bless America
During WWII the "V" for Victory handsign was often used and has since been (It has older origins).
I saw Arafat using that handsign the other day and it made me feel less than enthusiastic about it.
I propose that we alter the sign. Put the two fingers together.
This would symbolize the twin towers and the coming together of our nation.
Just a thought.
AMEN! I watched and listened with a tear in my eye.
He's one fine Preseident, and might not make a preacher either!
The only low point of the serive, other than BHC, was the preacherette who gave the benediction urging that we not avenge evil with evil. I fear she will be disappointed in days to come.
I used to share your opinion of President Carter, but his stock has really dropped in my eyes. He was hesitant to make any criticism at all about the pathologically lying, impeached rapist, but then he practically falls all over himself insulting President Bush for his views. Not to mention Carter couldn't keep his nose out of the Florida election debacle. Just my two cents.
Sorry, Jesus was mentioned several times, by several of the speakers. Dr. Graham even inserted, "for Christian.." with his remarks that were purely Christian.
But the service was for all faiths, the faiths of the dead and dying as well as those in attendance.
There should be a recording of it somewhere, and you father should not continue to believe and communicate that Jesus was not mentioned.
;-)
I'm sure it has other connotations too. :-)
But then I felt better when I realized that the reason that the "rapist in chief" stayed so long, was that he is unemployed and had nothing else better to do for the rest of the afternoon. While George W. Bush left to return to the White House to run the war.
Thank you for posting it.
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