Today (Sept. 11) I attended a meeting of the directors of the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board in Franklin.
I couldn’t help but remember that 17 years ago (Sept. 11, 2001) I was attending a meeting of the Executive Board of the Tennessee Baptist Convention (now TBMB) when news reports began coming in about the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City and in Washington D.C. Executive Board members immediately had a time of prayer for our nation.
Those terrorist attacks brought America to its knees. Churches in Tennessee and all across the nation held special prayer vigils and services. Even government leaders called our nation to prayer. I cannot remember a time before or since when so many government and secular leaders talked about trusting in God and prayer.
In my editorial the week following 9/11, I wrote, “I don’t remember ever seeing so many people from all walks of life join in prayer gatherings all across this country. Americans are beginning to see, perhaps some for the first time, that the only hope America has is in God. My prayer is that this ‘awakening’ will last.”
Seventeen years later, I can say with sadness and regret, “It didn’t last.” We have forgotten the horror and tragedy of that day.
America has drifted back to the pre-9/11 days and, if anything, the country is more divided than ever before. Our nation is in trouble. Government leaders are more concerned about their political party than what’s best for the nation as a whole. There’s racial tension in the world that scares me. People have no respect for authority. The list could go on and on.
Former Clarksville pastor Verlon Moore was chairman of the Executive Board on that fateful day in 2001. He said then, “It is time to quit singing ‘God Bless America’ and begin living a life that He can bless.”
Those words are as true today as they were then. Pray that America will wake up and that it won’t take another 9/11 tragedy to bring us to our knees once again.
