five years later

Five years ago today (9/11), we had only recently relocated to Covington, Georgia, to begin work with Covington Christian Church. When I say "recently," we had been in town for less than a week.

On that morning, I was scheduled to have coffee with our worship pastor and start planning our upcoming worship services. We met at a little soda fountain on the square. When he arrived, he mentioned that there had been a plane that had flown into a building in New York and we both thought it must have been an accident. Only a few minutes later did we learn that a second plane had flown into the World Trade Center and these were no accidents.

We immediately packed up and went back to his house. For the next several hours we sat speechless and just watched the images on the television. We both watched each of the towers fall. Even today I can't fully explain or describe what I felt.

Needless to say, I scrapped my planned topic for that weekend and spoke about healing.

Five years later, the images of 9/11 still bring tears to my eyes. This morning one of the cable networks was replaying their broadcast from that day. Even as I type, I still get shivers.

Politics and prognosticating aside, 9/11 reminds me that we live in a fallen world that desperately needs hope. It desperately needs Jesus. It did then ... and it does now.