Thursday, September 11, 2003

1:23 PM The speech President Bush delivered at the National Cathedral on September 14, 2001 deserves to be remembered. Here’s a link to the text. An excerpt:

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… . 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.

1:06 PM Gary Bauer has a good comment on the attempt by liberal secularists to force the removal of the steel-beam cross found in the rubble of Ground Zero. 9:10 AM I am sitting at my desk in my basement office at home—exactly where I was two years ago when Marlene called to say that planes had struck the World Trade Center. I was getting ready for the weekly staff meeting when she called. I remember going upstairs and watching TV with a sense of disbelief. The next few hours stand out in my mind as a time of confusion and uncertainty. Who did this? How did they do it? And why? That evening hundreds of people came to a prayer meeting in the sanctuary. People came from off the street—people who didn’t know what kind of church we were. They came in dazed and fearful, hoping to find a place where they could pray and connect with God somehow. We had another prayer meeting the next night. That Friday at noon we had another service in the sanctuary. The Old Navy store a few blocks away closed down—just locked its doors—and the whole staff walked over to attend the service. That weekend, in one of the amazing serendipities that only God could arrange, a team from Calvary drove through the night to deliver 5000 copies of “An Anchor for the Soul” to Calvary Chapel of Old Bridge, New Jersey. They distributed the books at Ground Zero. They told us later people stood in line to get copies. Those were amazing days. This AM I saw a newspaper headline—”Two Years Later, a Thousand Years Ago.” That’s exactly how it feels to me. 9:00 AM Mark and Karen Kleinkopf wrote the Living Sacrifices devotional for today based on Mark 14:45-46, “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” Here’s an excerpt:

Seeking the Kingdom of Heaven is seeking Jesus himself. The first step is to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven by accepting Jesus as Savior. The remaining steps are a lifelong journey, ever being transformed into more of Jesus, and less of us. The destination is eternity with Jesus