Do you ever wonder why the world is such a mess?

There is a reason for it.

Do you ever scratch your head at some of the inane things that are often said by highly educated folks in places like New York or Las Angeles? Or how is it that so many folks living on either coast so completely don’t understand the vast majority of the rest of our country living in the “fly over” states?

How is it that so many of the folks who head up so many of our educational, cultural, governmental, and corporate entities seem able to come up with such bizarre stuff? And then, if someone might happen to disagree, either look at them as though they are ignorant children or portray them as nasty folks for daring to dissent with what everyone knows to be true?

Did you know there is a reason that so many people think followers of Jesus are a bit loopy. (I mean besides the fact that so many of us have turned Christianity into nothing more than a list of do’s and don’ts and rail on anyone who isn’t keeping our list. That’s a topic for a rant of its own.)

Paul talks about this very topic in the Bible. It is a long passage. But take a moment and read the whole thing.

But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who push the truth away from themselves. For the truth about God is known to them instinctively. God has put this knowledge in their hearts. From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God.Yes, they knew God, but they wouldn’t worship him as God or even give him thanks. And they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. The result was that their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they became utter fools instead. And instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they worshiped idols made to look like mere people, or birds and animals and snakes.

So God let them go ahead and do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies. Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies. So they worshiped the things God made but not the Creator himself, who is to be praised forever.

The truth is that in spite of how poorly many of us Christians represent the person of Jesus, in the end folks won’t be able to use that as an excuse. The reality of God’s existence is evident in the world around us. People who insist on having “proof” that God exists before they will acknowledge him only need to open their eyes and look around.

Of course when you’re looking for an excuse, any excuse will do. For someone who doesn’t want to believe it doesn’t matter what “reason” for not believing they fix on. One excuse works just as well as another.

But after reading that bit from the Bible, is it any wonder that so many different religions have sprung up here in the last two thousand years? We humans have been hard wired with the desire to worship something, anything, even if it is ourselves. When folks reject God it is not uncommon for them to eventually begin to make up their own ideas of what God is like.

Many of the newer religious sects claim for their authority the fact that their founder was visited by an angel who delivered to them a divine message. Yet Paul has strong words about that too.

Let God’s curse fall on anyone, including myself, who preaches any other message than the one we told you about. Even if an angel comes from heaven and preaches any other message, let him be forever cursed.

You may think that the idea of someone bowing down in worship to a statue of a bird or a snake is silly, something that never happens anymore. Fair enough. Yet, if you think about it, how many folks do you suppose place inordinately high value on the world around us? There are definitely some who place a higher value on earth, and the other living things on it than they do on other people. They focus their energies on protecting these things at the expense of people’s welfare in the interest of caring for “Mother Earth.”

Some really do choose to worship the environment. How else do you explain inane statements like cigarette smoking is a significant contributer to greenhouse gases? I mean I’m no fan of smoking, but that is just silly. It seems to be a statement from someone who is claiming to be wise but has become an utter fool instead.

When we choose to reject God and instead focus on disproportionally emphasizing the things that God made, God in his mercy lets us go off in that direction. He could by rights strike us dead when we reject him, I suppose. But instead he chooses to continue to give us opportunities to change our mind and follow him.

The Bible says, “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding.”

James even lets us know how we can get more wisdom if we find we are lacking it.

If you need wisdom–if you want to know what God wants you to do–ask him, and he will gladly tell you. He will not resent your asking.

Rejecting God is a very dangerous business. We may believe we are doing the smart thing by doing so. But the irony is, the smarter we feel we are getting, the dumber the things we do and say as we get further from the wisdom of God.

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There is a very disturbing, yet very accurate piece in the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page this morning about Port Security. The article is titled On the Waterfront — Still after the 1950’s Marlon Brando movie which tells a story about corrupt union activity on the docks.

Now I am on and off various terminals here in the Southeast every day as I have been for over 10 years. My maritime related background goes back nearly 20 years. And the WSJ has hit a nerve. Go ahead and read the article if you want a better understanding of one of the biggest reasons our ports security is still so very lax.

It has been common knowledge that there are some very unsavory folks with felonious records filling out the Longshoremen ranks. Don’t get me wrong, there are a great many Longshore union members who are hard working, above board, contentious, ethical patriots. (Yes some of them actually do work hard.)

Over the years I’ve heard tons of stories about stabbings, shootings perpetrated by the labor force both on the docks and out in town. The most memorable was the story about the longshoremen who supposedly carried a duffel bag on the job that he wouldn’t let anyone look in. Finally it turned out that he’d been carrying around his ex-wife’s head in the bag for days. Don’t know if it was true or not, but at least that story ended with the guy getting escorted off the port by the police. And I could see it happening.

Some operations I’ve seen were notorious for their pilferage, which is a fancy word for stealing. Usually is it is rationalized with the phrase, “Well, everyone is doing it.” No everyone isn’t.

And it is not unusual for a regular worker to disappear for several months, or maybe a few years while he takes a break at the county or state facilities because of drugs, or an assault, or robbery, or shooting (whatever) only to be right back on the docks when he’s served his time.

Now some will argue that a man shouldn’t be double punished by losing his livelihood just because he made a mistake. I am not unsympathetic to their point. However when it comes to security, past behavior is a pretty strong indicator of future risk. And I’m not so sure the WSJ gets the risk exactly right. I don’t think that even a felonious Longshoreman would knowingly agree to turn a blind eye to a cargo of plutonium. However I could see one taking a cash payment to “not ask any questions” about the particular cargo being smuggled in and do it unknowingly as a result.

The WSJ article points to a huge problem with the security of our ports: the power of the unions. The unions are actively lobbying against common sense security measures because they know it would create problems for large portions of their membership keeping their jobs. These felonious members pay their union dues compliantly and therefore their union bosses lobby hard and effectively to protect their jobs.

It is unconscionable that, more than 5 years after 9-11 we still do not have a national transit worker ID card. The government truly has no idea who is really working at our ports. For all we know, someone on the terrorist watch list may be at one of our ports today. And the only reason we don’t have an ID card system in place is because the unions don’t want the government doing background checks on their membership and bringing to light how large a percentage of their membership, the people actually present in the daily handling of our nation’s cargo, are actually convicted felons.

Instead we have a bizarre system where every individual terminal is responsible for creating their own security system. Some terminals have decent security. But more often it is a joke with the protection of our country being assigned to a $7 an hour “security guard” who often times is either too old, or too obese to actually offer any protection more strenuous than writing a name on a list of paper.

As a result of the current non-system, those of us who routinely go to multiple terminals (and I can think of 11 different terminals off the top of my head on the Savannah River alone) are forced to carry a stack of different ID cards for each of the different terminals. And the problem is even worse for the truck drivers who haul the containers around the country. For them, it’s like shuffling through a deck of cards in their truck to find the right ID each time they pull a container up to a different terminal.

Meanwhile the politicians keep passing bills with fancy sounding names to pacify the uninformed public into believing that port security is actually being improved. It sounds like they are actually doing something to help keep our nation safe. But really they are trying to convince us that naked emperor is really wearing beautiful clothes while they handicap the very folks they are bringing into the Department of Homeland Security to protect us by caving to the pressure of the unions.

Unfortunately, absent of any political leadership with the fortitude to stand up to the unions on this issue, it is going to take a 9-11 level event at our ports to shake our government into any action to seriously protect our ports.

And when the big one finally happens they will respond in their typical close-the-barn-door-behind-the-horse fashion by shutting down all port activity for days while they scramble to figure out what to do. If you think there was a recession and it was hard on our economy after 9-11 when passenger airline traffic was halted for a few days I have something to tell you.

You ain’t seen nothing yet.

Update: Michelle Malkin also notes the problem of Felons in Our Ports and how the problem is damaging to Homeland Security.

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Gorgeous got home the other day and found the air conditioner had quit. Not a good thing to happen down here in Georgia. Fortunately for us the nights are starting to get a little cooler.

The other good thing is that we called our home warranty folks to arrange for a technician to come out to look at our A/C. No problem, they said, and arranged to have a technician head over to take a look see the next day some time.

We had a house guest who fortunately was a good sport about the whole thing. So we just opened the windows, got some fans working and made the best of it.

But then when I got up the next morning I realized the problem might be a little bigger than just a faulty a/c unit.

I got up at my customarily early hour, shuffled out to the kitchen, clicked on the light over the microwave (no bright lights first thing in the morning for me) and got started on my morning coffee making ritual. When I turned the coffee pot on I immediately noticed a couple things.

First the nice, not so bright light over the stove dimmed down to about half as bright. And I heard the box fan we had going in our bedroom stop. I poked my head back in the bedroom and saw that our alarm clock was also off.

Back in the kitchen I turned the pot off again. The light went back to normal and I heard the fan again. Yep. The alarm clock was back on, blinking 12:00.

Hmmm…. Ver-r-r-y Inteh-rehs-tink.

I decided maybe I better not make any coffee if the process was going to stress out the rest of the house like that.

Our house guest had also had to get up early to catch an early flight back home. Fortunately her alarm clock was battery operated and went off in good order. She had a fun time getting ready until we worked out that every time we turned on a light somewhere in the house it seemed to make the lights in the guest bathroom dim a little more. When we turned them back off, the brightened a touch.

Nothing like getting ready for the dawn patrol in a disco bathroom!

I decided a call to the power company was in order.

After a frustrating couple of runs through the voice recognizing automated menu (technically our power wasn’t “out”. It just wasn’t all on.) I was put through to an incredibly helpful and nice lady who took down all my weird symptoms and assured me they’d send someone out right away.

And she wasn’t kidding.

Right about 30 minutes later a Georgia Power truck drove up. Actually the side of the truck still said Savannah Electric, but they were just bought out this summer. The repair man did his electrical voodoo and said, “Yep. You’ve got a problem.”

Fortunately for us the problem was on his side of the meter.

Unfortunately he didn’t have the equipment needed to fix the problem. He said another truck was heading our way and they would take care of it.

A couple hours later another, bigger truck pulled up towing a trailer with an excavator on it. I had visions of them digging up our entire lawn. But the guys told me they could probably get to the problem with shovels.

Sure enough they got our power fully restored. Total time from first dialing the phone to the power company: less than 4 hours.

When they were finished, the guys explained to me that sometimes other utility companies accidentally nick the main power line going into a house when they are burying their cabling. The damage causes the power line to fail slowly over time. It is not unusual to have a problem like ours rear its head years after the damage was originally done.

I’ve had some time to think about our little power struggle this week with all my time in the car (I think it can find Jacksonville without me at this point).

Our struggle this week is a strong analogy of the struggle that followers of Jesus face every day. Jesus himself promised that we’d be plugged into the power of God in one of his last recorded statements.

But when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you will receive power and will tell people about me everywhere–in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

All in all the New Testament contains well over 100 references to power. Most of them are talking about the power of God or of Jesus himself. But there are several that speak of the power of Jesus’ followers. For example check out these passages:

For the kingdom of God is not a matter of talk but of power. *

The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. *

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen. *

Yet somehow most of us believers operate as though we are only partially connected to our power source.

Sometimes things are like the air conditioning unit and simply just don’t work in our lives. Maybe we have some addiction or bad habit that we want to be free of, but can’t seem to shake no matter how hard we try. Maybe we are drawn to alcohol, smoke too much, have angry outbursts, eat way more than we should, spend time looking at pornography, whatever. Because we’re only partially connected to our source of power, we aren’t getting enough juice to overcome the bad thing which has control over us even though maybe we desperately want to.

Or maybe we seem to be tapped into our power source, but like turning on the coffee pot, we get unexpected results because we are not fully connected. Maybe we are very successful at work, but somehow our home relationships self destruct at the same time and we end up divorced. Maybe we pray though a big decision, feel we hear from God, step out and then, Kaplewie! Things blow up in our face. Not the result we expected.

Was God trying to trick us into making a mistake? Or is it more likely that somehow we were not fully connected to our power source?

Perhaps the reason so many see Christianity to be irrelevant to our society today is that we are so weakly connected to our power source that we don’t seem to be any different than anyone else. The only difference in many of our lives from those who don’t believe is that we get up early on Sunday morning while everyone else sleeps in. That’s not a great a selling point! Why would anyone want to follow Jesus if that is the only difference?

We were meant for more. More power. And more results.

Let me close out today with words that Paul wrote to one of the New Testament churches

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

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Attention: This post gets a little gross. Read further at your own risk.

You have been warned.

I discovered at least one thing I want yesterday. And it is a very petty, purely self serving sort of thing.

But I really do want it.

I want to have a decent looking lawn. Well, more to the point, I want to be able to afford to pay someone else to maintain a decent looking lawn.

I’ve written about my disdain for yard work in general several times before, so it’s no secret. But just in case you might need a “Chris Cree hates yard work” primer check out these posts: Start with Yard Work to see an example of why I don’t like it in the first place. Then move on to Resident Evil and The Lesson of the Dog Poop to read about some hazards of working in my yard. Of course there are some times when it is useful to have a yard to mow as you can see in A Fool and His Anger.

Yesterday was another one of those “hazards of yard” work days.

The first thing I had against me is that I really don’t like going to the doctor. It makes sense, really.

I’ve run out of my allergy meds. And it has been over a year since I’ve been to my doctor because, fortunately, I haven’t been sick in a while. At least not sick enough to go see the doc. But they have a policy that they will only write out so many refills before they insist that you come into their office for a visit. Now I’m not apposed to going to the doc. I just don’t like to go in unless I’m sick. I don’t want to hear the “You’re in pretty good shape but you really should eat a little less and exercise more” speech. I know I should. I don’t want to pay for an office visit to hear it again.

The unfortunate result of my doctor visit hang up is that my sinuses are producing vast quantities of yuckiness. (Please remember I warned you this was going to get gross.)

It was tempting to let the yard go a bit longer. My neighbors have sure seen worse. However we’ve got some company inbound today and it is my job to make sure the outside of our place is presentable.

So, as is my custom, I waited until it got to about 88 degrees before I went out to cut the grass yesterday, just to make sure it was as unpleasant an experience as possible. I still haven’t figured out how I manage to do that almost every time. Or why.

Gorgeous had the presence of mind to head for the mall, smart lady that she is.

Did I mention it is love bug season? I left that part out. Love bugs are weird things. They are mostly harmless. The good news is they don’t bite. They seem to come out here and in Florida in large swarms for only a week or two. They are called love bugs because you almost always see them in pairs like in the photo.

They aren’t normally much of a hazard, except for your car. They have this nasty tendency to smash themselves all over the front of your car and windshield. Then in the hot sun their guts bake on and are hard to get off as they eat away the paint or get smeared around by your wipers.

But they truly were swarming yesterday. And the mower seemed to stir them all up. Fortunately there weren’t any bities out because I kinda got numb to having insects crawl on me because the love bugs were everywhere.

So anyway there I was out in the heat walking back and forth behind the mower producing more snot than a tear gas victim at a Miami riot. Every now and then I’d take a break and go inside, both for a cool-down and a kleenex. I’d try to hold off as long as possible and just keep the snotting to a minimum with some serious sniffling. Snort. Snort. Snort. All around the yard. I’m sure the neighbors were digging that scene.

Do you see where this is going?

I was about halfway finished with the back yard, just at the point where I could catch a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel of yard work suffering, snorting my way through, when it happened.

I snorted just as a pair of love bugs flew by my nostril. And up they went.

Fortunately I didn’t feel them go down the back of my throat. But I could swear I felt them crawling around inside my head. It definitely was a kleenex emergency of the highest order. I abandoned the mower, quickly made my way to the kitchen and grabbed yet another kleenex. And I blew into it. Out came the bugs. Drowned in my snot.

Totally gross for me. Fatal for them.

Now you can spare me the lectures about how I brought this on myself. I know that. Regardless the experience didn’t do much to improve my total dislike for yard work.

But it did make me realize how much I want to be able to afford to pay someone else to do it for me.

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Yesterday I received an award in the mail from Tom Vander Well over at QAQnA. Tom invited me to join his Mug Club and I gratefully accepted. Looking through the club I see that Tom has put me in very prestigious company!

Tom even sent me a very beautiful gold plated travel mug which, as of this morning, will officially replace my old Starbucks travel mug as the ubiquitous appendage on my wanderings.

I actually nearly met Tom when I was up in Chicago this summer. We were both in town at the same time, me for business. If I remember correctly, Tom was visiting family. Unfortunately our schedules did not work out. Ah, well.

But I do find it interesting how the blogging world seems to revolve around Chicago, at least in my case. Hmmm…

Thanks Tom, for the honor. Yours is an incredibly classy major award (unlike the major award the dad received in A Christmas Story). I’m sure to use it until I wear it out.

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If you arrange the Gospels chronologically, this is one of the first things that Jesus was recorded saying to his disciples. It’s a very big question that encompasses a whole slew of other questions.

What do you want?

• What is it you are looking for?
• What do you want to see happen?
• What do you want to achieve?
• What do you want to be a part of?
• Whom do you want to get to know?
• Where do you want to go?
• What do you want to possess?
• What do you want to give?

The is an unbelievable depth to those four little words in that question. I’m just scratching the surface.

Just like the disciples Jesus first asked the question just scratched the surface. Their answer? “Where are you staying?” Very superficial. It was sort of like asking, “Can we hang out with you for a little while?” I’m not sure the disciples really knew what it was they truly wanted.

I’m not sure I know what I want either.

As usual, Jesus answered their question and a whole lot more at the same time. “Come and see,” was all he said. Basically Jesus was telling them to spend some time with him. Then they’d find what they really wanted, that thing they were looking for.

Most folks don’t see Christianity as very relevant to real, day-to-day life these days. Yet the first thing Jesus asks his would-be disciples goes right to the core of who they are. By extension he is asking us the same exact thing.

What do you want?

You may have your life’s plan all figured out. If you do, I’m genuinely happy for you.

But I’m not there with you, though. Even though I’m rapidly approaching 40, I still don’t really know what it is I want to be when I grow up. One thing I learned flying in the Navy: You’ll never hit your target if you don’t decide which target to aim at.

Therefore I am going to take some down time by lowering my priority for the blogging scene while I wrestle with the question. When I come out the back side of the process I fully expect some things will change. What, exactly, I have no idea at this point. Nor do I know how long it will take.

But I’m sure it will be an interesting process.

Do you know the answer to the question?

What do you want?

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Gorgeous went out of town to a conference this weekend.

That is always a bit of a bummer. But I try to make the best of it. I took the opportunity to watch the movie Flight 93.

I knew Gorgeous didn’t want to watch it, “It’s too depressing.”

And I understand where she’s coming from. But at the same time I think it is important that we remember what went on that day. So I watched it while she was out of town.

The moving was incredibly powerful. I’m not a weepy kind of guy, but even I found my self welling up at the way the movie depicted the resolve of those heroic passengers on that plane. Apparently they pretty much knew there was little hope of surviving the day. Yet they chose to take action to make the best of their horrible situation.

I thought the movie did a good job not going overboard into hype or patriotism. Because there were no survivors the movie creators obviously had to fill in some gaps. They may or may not have gotten things exactly the way they happened.

What they did do is focus on the phone conversations that the passengers had with others on the ground. The resulting effect of this approach is incredibly powerful. And it limits the amount of speculation that they had to delve into.

I highly recommend the movie if you ever get a chance to see it.

On another note, I found a must read article called One Arab’s Apology. Check out what the author has to say. I originally found it here at the New York Post.

I hope we see more of that sentiment well up from Muslims about what is going on.

In a related note, what about the hubbub surrounding the Pope?

Here is what he originally said.

Here is how Muslim’s are responding.

So, the Pope quotes some guy from back in 1391 who points out that the founder of the Muslim religion had some issues like the fact that he commanded that his religion be spread by killing and violence. And apparently today’s Muslims are so offended by the Pope quoting a guy from over 600 years ago that their response is killing and violence.

Um, doesn’t that pretty thoroughly illustrate the point of the comment in the first place?

And the best part is the Pope’s speech really wasn’t about slamming Muslims at all. (Not that the leader of a religion should have to apologize for attempting to explain why he feels his beliefs are superior to others anyway. That’s the business he’s in, for Pete’s sake!) He was really pointing out the problem we have today because reason has attempted to divest itself from the spiritual and philosophical.

Even the apparently offending quote was used to illustrate the difficulty between religion and violence in general.

I don’t get the how the response that is being generated is at all reasonable or acceptable.

I have a confession to make. I struggle with destructive thought patterns.

There are times when I fool myself by rationalizing away behavior I know is wrong. My natural tendency is to be a “glass half empty” sort of guy. I instinctively see first the reasons why something won’t work before even looking for ways it might work. If something gets challenging or I run into obstacles it is not unusual for me to start questioning whether the idea is really “of God”. My track record is littered with things that I quit when things got a little difficult.

Don’t get me wrong. My reality is not all doom and gloom. But according to Paul, the author of the Book of Romans, it would appear that I often copy the behavior and patterns of this world with my thoughts. It is something he tells us we shouldn’t do. At least we shouldn’t if we want to know what it is that God wants for us.

There was a time when I really didn’t believe that it was really possible for me to have any sort of control over my thoughts. To me it seemed that my thoughts just happened. How was I going to control something that just happened all on its own?

I don’t buy into that anymore. I mean why would Paul tell us that we should change something if there was no possibility for us to have any control over it in the first place? Paul was a really smart guy. If it was impossible for us to have any control over our thoughts he wouldn’t have told us that we need to get a grip on them.

In another place, the same guy tells us some of the things that we should think about.

And now, dear brothers and sisters, let me say one more thing as I close this letter. Fix your thoughts on what is true and honorable and right. Think about things that are pure and lovely and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned from me and heard from me and saw me doing, and the God of peace will be with you.

Paul tells us the kinds of things we should be thinking about that have the ability to change our behavior for the better and ultimately put us into the very presence of God.

A Question

So here’s my question for you: How do you personally go about the process of changing your thoughts, or what other translations call “the renewing of your mind”?

I said at the beginning that this is an area where I struggle. I haven’t rolled over and given up here. This is one battle I want to win. I figure learning to conquer my destructive thought patterns is one of the keys that will unlock success in much of the rest of my life.

So go ahead and share some of the practical things you do that help you in this area.

Here’s a potentially interesting topic for discussion. TIME Magazine has a photo essay on Prosperity Preachers.

What do you think of what these folks have to say?

There is no doubt these people are popular and they attract large followings. Do you think that God wants you to be rich?

Most of these folks say some form of “God wants you to be successful.” Are they on target or off base?

The new blog I’ve started up is SuccessCREEations. Do you suppose that means that I am aligning myself with these folks? Or would you say that I’m on some other track?

When you Google “prosperity preacher” Joel Osteen’s name shows up twice in the first ten results. Now I don’t know much about him other than I caught part of one of his messages once when I was getting ready in the morning at my hotel room in Dallas at a conference one time. But apparently folks say his church is growing because he tell them God wants them to be rich.

There are other folks who say that those who oppose the “prosperity gospel” crowd are just selling God short, or maybe they are lazy and don’t want to do their part to be successful.

What do you think?

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It was a Tuesday, happened to be my day off. Five years ago this morning, when everything changed for me, our country, and the whole world.

Yet today, as I reflect on the memory of the horror of that moment, very little is really any different than it was when I woke up that morning.

Because it was my day off I had slept late that morning. I remember that I was reading, as was my morning habit, when the phone rang. It was one of my wife’s girlfriends, which again was fairly normal. What was not normal was when Gorgeous put her hand over the receiver and said, “Chris turn on CNN. A plane just hit the World Trade Center.”

Being a former Naval Flight Officer I remember thinking as I hunted for the remote, “Man. Some bug smasher pilot must have really screwed up!”

Even after I tuned in to the all news channel I tried to mentally calculate how a private plane could account for the damage and the smoke that I was seeing. I didn’t want to consider that it could be anything more than a horrible accident.

While I was watching I thought about my four years in New York City. How I enjoyed leaving campus in the Bronx early on weekend mornings to head into “The City”, which is how we referred to Manhattan. I would often make my way down to the financial district because I liked the solitude of walking amongst such huge buildings with so very few people around. The streets were often still wet from the night action of the street sweepers, or maybe a passing rain shower.

Somehow that part of the city at that time of the week would smell surprisingly clean to me. And that dichotomy of smell and place was one of the things I like most about making the trip that early when most of my classmates were still sleeping.

I liked to wander around the World Trade Center complex. The big buildings fascinated me. And the twin towers were the biggest. Sometimes I would get right up beside them and lean back. Looking up from that perspective the huge towering building seemed to curve back over my head. I remember feeling the building sway in the wind up as I looked down at the helicopters scurrying around the city from the observation deck 107 stories up.

Then I watched the second plane hit the second tower.

It was no bug smasher. At that moment I knew I was watching something to horrible to understand fully. And the images kept pouring in.

There were the shots of that second plane hitting the tower which were played over and over like the instant replay of some sporting event. There were the long shots of the smoke billowing out from the upper floors of those two towers like the were some big candles burning far away.

But eventually the cameras got in closer and we saw people looking down at us through the tears in the building as they desperately tried to find some clear air to breath and escape the heat and flames. And then the unimaginable started happening. We saw film of people falling 1,000 feet or more from the burning areas of the buildings. Not just one or two but dozens.

I watched in disbelief as the first tower collapsed in on itself in a cloud of concrete and smoke. How could this happen?!

By the time I watched the second tower meet the same fate as the first my disbelief was turning to anger. I was angry at the people who did this. But mostly I was angry because of what I knew.

Deep down I knew that no matter how much changed as a result of that day, there was one lesson that we would likely fail to learn. And now, five years later, it seems I was right.

The events of September 11, 2001 really are too horrible to fully comprehend. And doesn’t matter whether you believe the conspiracy theories that are gaining ground these days that claim the government somehow caused all the destruction that day as a pretense for going to war. Or if you believe that it was a deliberate attack by some extremist who are on the fringes of a religion subscribed to by over a billion people on this earth whose holy book teaches that each of us should be killed if we don’t convert to their religion.

The bottom line is the events of that day are also a warning to us. The reality is this: Our safety and security, our prosperity, our very success as a nation on the stage of history is not solely dependent on our Government.

The Bible teaches that God is at work in the events of man. It is God who raises nations up. And it is God who brushes them aside, sometimes in a moment.

If the USA is currently the world’s only superpower it is because God has made it so. And God can change that status in less than a day if he chooses. It is God that can cause the most powerful army in the world to be defeated by peasant fighters if he chooses. God can see that every single attempted terrorist act is discovered and stopped before it happens if he chooses. And God can allow a wave of terror to envelope a nation if he chooses.

Our failure is that we neglect to acknowledge this reality. 9/11 taught us a lot. But this is one lesson we have chosen not to learn. In stead of turning to God and asking for his divine protection we turn to our government to keep us safe. We expect our technology, our powerful military, and our security procedures to be able to protect us from all harm.

And we forget the one person who has the certain ability to keep us completely safe and secure.

Many people in our nation today will take off their shoes going through a security checkpoint more frequently than they will acknowledge God and seek his protection. They grumble about the bureaucratic approach to security that involves frisking grandmothers, yet trust that the bureaucracy will keep them safe.

Yet there is one who can make our security precautions completely effective. There is one who can divinely compensate for any shortcomings in our systems and procedures.

We turn our backs on that one at our own peril.

As you scroll down through the photos that remind us of the horrible suffering of so many that fateful day 5 years ago, think about the words written by a leader who understood how dependent his country was on God for their protection.

In times of trouble, may the LORD respond to your cry.
May the God of Israel keep you safe from all harm.May he send you help from his sanctuary
and strengthen you from Jerusalem.

May he remember all your gifts
and look favorably on your burnt offerings.

May he grant your heart’s desire
and fulfill all your plans.

May we shout for joy when we hear of your victory,
flying banners to honor our God.
May the LORD answer all your prayers.

Now I know that the LORD saves his anointed king.
He will answer him from his holy heaven
and rescue him by his great power.

Some nations boast of their armies and weapons,
but we boast in the LORD our God.

Those nations will fall down and collapse,
but we will rise up and stand firm.

Give victory to our king, O LORD!
Respond to our cry for help.

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