One of my grandsons was married yesterday afternoon in a beautiful outdoor ceremony. Yes, they are young, but they are out of school and are working people. Today, they are off to Hawaii for their honeymoon. Congratulations Matthew and Laura! God loves you and so do we.
Cathy of "Cathy's Place to Blog" hosted a blog challenge for posts about 9/11/2001. I want to thank everyone who went to her blog site and voted for me. I won! I won! Okay, now I will humbly quit bragging (yeah, sure!) and tell you to check her blog for very interesting writing. Check her blog here.
September 11, 2001
It was shortly before nine, that Tuesday morning, when the phone began to jangle on my bedside table. Okay, so I was lolling about on my bed like Cleopatra on her barge. It was a time of life when there were no pressing reasons to leave the soft comfort of my quintessential retreat. I languidly answered and heard the excited voice of my youngest daughter. "A plane just flew into one of the Twin Towers in New York! Turn on your TV!" 
The horror unfolding before our eyes short-circuited the link between reality and belief. The child within wanted to deny that this could be happening even though our eyes watched the undeniable on the screen. How could such an accident happen? Stacey and I talked as we watched separately, yet bonded together in mutual sorrow for those who would never again talk with a loved one or cuddle deeply in their comfortable beds with a spouse, lover or child. People leapt from windows without hope of living, but in fear of dying from the flames left behind. American Airlines Flight 11 had ended at 8:46 am. As we watched and talked, we saw United Airlines Flight 175 hit the second tower at 9:03 --- the age of innocence ended as we realized there are people in the world who want us dead. American Flight 77 tore into the Pentagon Building at 9:37 and United Flight 93 plummeted into the ground in Pennsylvania at 10:06. This all occurred in one hour and twenty minutes, but would change the world as we know it forever. We cried together and finally hung up the phones, only to remain transfixed before the TVs. The words Muslim, elQuaida and terrorists began to filter into the reporters jargon and I searched my mind for what little knowledge I had of their activities.
Americans have attended their churches faithfully for hundreds of years and have heard the Biblical stories of the ancestors of Jesus; not thinking of the ramifications of the Old Testament lineage of Abraham and Sarah. Many people know only of Jesus' birth, death and resurrection. You know --- Christmas and Easter people. The faith of Abraham filtered down from King David to God's only son, Jesus, through many generations of Hebrews. When Abraham was eighty-six years old, he took (at Sarah's behest) Sarah's handmaiden (slave), Hagar. She bore a son, Ishmael. They thought this would fulfill God's promise of a son for Abraham in his old age, but no! God had promised a son through Abraham's legal wife, Sarah. It was accomplished when Abraham was one hundred years old and the child was named Isaac. Isaac's descendants are the Jewish Nation, of whom Jesus is one descendant .... the "new covenant" with God, from which the Christians spring. Ishmael and Hagar were cast out into the desert to become the Arab Nation. God promised Hagar that her son, Ishmael, would head many nations. This, from The Living Bible; God appeared to Hagar in Genesis 17:10-12, saying , "This son of yours will be a wild one --- free and untamed as a wild ass! He will be against everyone, and everyone will feel the same towards him. But, he will live near the rest of his kin." So, we know that the Arabs and the Jews are half-brothers, but surely the Arab Nation resents the inheritance of slavery as opposed to legitimate offspring of their forefather. The stage set over two thousand years ago endures between the Jews, Christians and the Arabs in lands all over the world to this day. The Barbary Pirates of the seventeenth century were Muslims, determined to acquire enough money to spread the word of the Qur'an telling the World of Allah through his prophet, Muhammad. Their Allah is the same God worshipped by Jews and Christians and Muhammad is their prophet, whom they consider to be the equivalent of our Jesus. However, Jews await the coming Messiah and Christians believe in the Trinity of God. . Early century Muslims were just as dedicated to their mission as they are today. Muslims have never rested in their zeal to rid the world of infidels, because they truly feel it is ordained by Allah that the world be ruled by their God. We must never cease to be vigilant, because the world, as we have know it, will never be the same. Our lives are frail as breath ... we gasp at the prospect of future attacks. What does God think of mankind's perversion of His love in His name? God have mercy. Was 9/11 the end of innocence or the beginning of the end?
