Today we spent our time together remembering this tragic event in our nation's history. Our children had little understanding and so we spent some time recounting our personal experiences. I was caring for our first child who was 11 months old at the time. I had her at an auto repair shop in Kansas City, MO at the time and remembered watching the planes hit while watching FOX News in the shop's waiting room. My wife was teaching school at the time and saw the events unfold on the television there. We explained what happened and how followers of Islam could be led into such terrible acts. Then we all watched a montage of the FOX News coverage that day to remind the adults and help the kids experience what it was like to see it all firsthand. After that we listened to one of the episodes of "A Nation Remembers" produced by Focus on The Family. This was a collection of interviews with various individuals who were emergency personnel or actual victims from the towers. We left it off after the first episode because the following ones were a little too graphic for the kids. These are amazing interviews by survivors of the towers. One of them survived 27 hours buried under the collapsed building before being rescued. Absolutely heart rending!
One of the most important lessons that I was reminded of was the importance of being real in your faith. Our God should not be toyed with and we need to keep our faith real and our hearts closely gaurded as we walk with Christ. During a crisis or tragedy there is no time to "get right with God", that is the time to rely on our faith to get ourselves and others through the crisis. I was reminded of this truth as one office worker led a co-worker to faith in Christ in the midst of their escaping the smoke and ash of the burning buildings.