A Memorial

Today is September 11, 2011.  We as a nation are remembering the terrible day ten years ago, September 11, 2001, otherwise known as 9/11.  I was pastoring the church in Tigard Oregon.  I had recently retired from my secular job and my wife also had recently left her employment. The week before 9/11, I felt lead to preach on the text found in 2nd Chronicles 7:14 which says, "if my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." I remember telling our church that the scripture was not speaking to the people in the world that did not know the Lord Jesus. The Lord said, "If my people..." I told the church that God's promise in the scripture was that He would heal our land if we would humble ourselves and pray and turn from our wicked way. God was speaking to us. Then my wife and I began a long anticipated trip to Aberdeen South Dakota where I pastored for a number of years, to our General Conference in Louisville KY, then on to the East Coast to visit my brother and his family in Providence RI, to visit Washington DC and finally to visit my sister-in-law and her family in Georgia then home.  

On September 11, we had stopped in Boise Idaho to visit my youngest daughter.  We parked our fifth wheel outside the apartment of her fiance.  While there we heard of the attacks in New York and sat transfixed throughout that day watching on my future son-in-law's television as the events unfolded in New York, in Washington DC and Shanksville PA. I wept much that day!  Let me say with conviction, if we as God's people, we who know Him, who have repented of our sins and been baptized in Jesus name and filled with the Holy Ghost, will humble ourselves and pray, seek His face and turn from our wicked ways, God will forgive our national sin of forgetting Him and He will heal our land. If you are one of them that belong to Jesus Christ, will you agree with me to heed the scripture found in 2nd Chronicles and seek the face of God? Don't delay do it today!