Day of Infamy, Day of Remembrance!

It was a beautiful fall day in November 1963. I was leaving a creative writing class at Wheaton College. As I stepped into the fall air I immediately sensed that the world had rocked. Soon I heard the news that John F. Kennedy had been shot and probably fatally wounded - shot in a motorcade in Dallas, TX. I remember that my friend (who is now my husband) was scribbling down thoughts and reactions because he believed that day would go down on the pages of history as another day of infamy. And it did!

Eight long years ago today the world rocked again when two planes deliberately flew into the World Trade Centers twin towers. I turned on the morning news just seconds after the first plane hit. Then I watched in surreal horror as another plane did the same thing! I remember thinking, "Am I really seeing what this looks like? How could this happen twice in the same hour? What in the world is going on?"

Later that morning our phone rang and my brother-in-law wanted to know if we were okay. I said, "Yes, why?" He told me about the plane that crashed near Pittsburgh - actually more than an hour away. It was another day of infamy!

It is a broken world we live in - a world filled with horror, with hate, with sin of all kinds! Mostly I am "insulated" from the worst of life so I am all the more stunned when I'm slapped upside the head with some new horror!

In the book of Revelation, the Bible promises us that someday - maybe soon - God will rock the world for the last time. He will send His Son from heaven one last time. On that wonderful day all wrongs will be made right, the broken will be made new. God will - in the words of J. R. R. Tolkien - make "everything sad come untrue"! On that day injustice will be corrected and recompensed! There will be no more tears, no more sin, no more sickness, no more sadness, no more failure, no more pain - and never any more need to die! (Rev. 21:3-5) On that day the words of Handel's Messiah (taken from Rev. 11:15) will come to life, "... The kingdom of this world will become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ forever and ever and ever. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Amen!"