Steve Hartman tells us the story of the flight that went down in Pennsylvania on 9/11. The passengers likely saved our capital from a direct hit by the plane. Thank you to the brave souls on the plane that day!
Max Lucado helps us understand that our money really isn’t yours. You have a Father with cattle on a thousand hills who is your provider. No worries. He will be there for you!
By Ashlie Miller
Twenty-five years. 9/11 has literally been a lifetime for some who are too young to remember. It continues to affect the lives of many survivors; many are still losing loved ones or coworkers to delayed-onset illnesses or cancers.
Like you, I remember where I was as I watched the tragic events unfold on live TV. I was not supposed to be home that late in the morning; however, a rough evening the night before delayed my getting started. I actually can remember 9/10 because of what happened on 9/11. The details are unnecessary, but a personal crisis on 9/10 rocked my little 24-year-old world. I thought I was losing control of all that was within my grasp. My own security and structure. My plans. Was my world slipping away from me?
I woke up the next day to see what everyone else saw. Yes, the world everyone shared was still there, yet it didn’t seem like it would stay that way. Was the world slipping away from us? Were our eyes and hearts meant to take in all that we were seeing in real time?
The weeks following were filled with many emotions. After the uncertainty of “what is actually unfolding?”, the feelings of confusion, anger, sadness, and even despair, many Americans had strong resolve – to keep the enemy from destroying our way of life and live it as it should be lived, with rhythms of normalcy and even laughter. Americans putting their own lives at risk, helping strangers, rallying communities, and later sharing healing laughter showed me what resilience can look like.
While we as a nation were figuring out how to survive what would surely defeat our morale, I was also learning to move past a major trial as a young adult who had not yet experienced that personal level of seeming despair. Watching the towers fall challenged and changed what I would consider a crisis. No, God did not take away the things that threatened my security in that moment. Rather, He began to teach me where my security really was: He was my security. My soul was still secure. I could weather any storm with Him, because of Him. The odds before me were not insurmountable. God used 9/10 and 9/11 to teach me to lean in – closer to both Jesus and my husband; everything else was too shaky.
God taught me that my systems of supposed security did not have to be in place for me to be ok. Once my personal neediness was fully exposed and submitted to God, there was not much left to hide. I could be honest about my feelings of despair and frustration, and like a child, expect Him lovingly to carry me through – no one else could. September 11 showed us that survival still has many more stories beyond the pain, and twenty-five years have provided a long season to foster growth, dependence, and trust.
Looking back, I can see that insurmountable odds also exposed how deeply I needed to fully trust my loving Father more than having everything securely in place myself. In 25 years, I’ve still been learning the lesson. Our world may shake tomorrow, or maybe just my own little world. But the psalmist reminds us (see Psalm 46) that God is our refuge and strength.
By Doug Creamer
Hard Prayers
Have you ever prayed and felt like God wasn’t listening? Maybe you felt like your prayers were just hitting the ceiling and bouncing back down. I think we get this feeling because it seems like nothing is happening. We pray and we pray but there are no results…that we can see. We ask God, we beg God…but there is no answer. How do we move forward on other things that need prayers when we feel like this one important thing to us hasn’t received any action from heaven?
Unanswered prayers give birth to doubt. Struggle. Sometimes God feels so close we imagine we can touch Him. Then there seems to be those times when we feel lost in a desert wandering around looking for Him. Do you even hear me, God? How long, Lord, will you leave me alone? Don’t you care that I am hurting?
King David, a man after God’s heart, felt this way. We hear David’s cry to God in Psalm 13, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” That sounds pretty desperate. We don’t know what drove David to write such words but we can hear the pain in his voice. In a way, David helps us to know it’s okay to express our laments to God.
In the first two verses of Psalm 13 David offers his complaints or laments to God. In the second two verses David lays out his petitions to God. In the final two verses there is a transformation that occurs. David reminds himself of God’s great love. How could someone who loves us so much that He gave His Son to die for us ever leave or forsake us? We need to remember that in those dark moments. We need to remember all the ways God has come through for us in the past and know that He will not leave us in our present circumstances. He WILL come through for us. He has not forgotten. His love will sustain us.
The next thing is truly amazing. David commands His heart to rejoice and praise God. Think about that. David is in a rough place, a place that He just complained to God about a few verses earlier, and now he is commanding his heart to rejoice and praise God. Did David feel like rejoicing? NO! Was his heart in it? Probably not. Imagine Paul and Silas in prison, bound with chains after being beaten. They chose to rejoice and praise God. Then their prison doors were opened and the jailer tended to their wounds. Paul and Silas shared their faith, still in pain from the beating, and they got to see the jailer and his family get born again!
Paul and Silas learned from David that we have to rejoice and worship God even though our circumstances aren’t fixed. We praise and worship because we trust Him with our circumstances, knowing that He is going to help us work it out. Our family experienced several losses over the last year or so and there were times I didn’t want to worship God. I was hurting inside but I commanded my soul to rejoice and worship anyway. It was hard. I did it with tears. It was a sacrifice of praise. Those are so beautiful to God, when we worship Him even when we don’t understand all that is going on. We trust Him to be at work even when we can’t see Him working.
Does that mean the pain goes away? That the suffering ends? That healing is given? That deliverance has come? NO! It means that we trust Him even when, especially when, we don’t understand what is happening. When it looks like things are out of control we have to run to Him and cling to Him and have faith that He will work everything out for our good. It doesn’t look possible with the mess before us, but He is the God of the impossible!
I want to encourage you to pray…especially when it feels hard. God hears every prayer! Nothing has escaped God’s attention. God is working even if we can’t see Him working. God knows what you need. Maybe it feels like He is testing you, but that is only because He wants to draw you closer. He wants you to learn that He is your provider, your healer, your deliverer, and your friend. He is your comforter through your pain. He doesn’t promise you will understand but He promises never to leave you. He is a good, good Father who has incredible plans for your life here and with Him in heaven.
Contact Doug Creamer at PO Box 777, Faith, NC 28041or doug@dougcreamer.com
Mel Robbins talks about how to stop guilty feelings and move forward in life. Listen….
By Roger Barbee
David McCullough’s The American Spirit is a timely read. A 2017 collection of fifteen of his speeches covering several years and settings, it is timely because its sub-title, Who We Are and What We Stand For is a reminder that 2022 is a good time to re-examine our character.
The selected speeches scan from 1989 to 2016 and were delivered at the White House and the United States Capitol and Monticello and other such settings, but, as fitting for a scholar like McCullough, most were shared at colleges and universities. As expected, each speech gave some history of the occasion, information about some of the people behind the occasion, and as he writes in the introduction, he always came away from each speaking date “with my outlook greatly restored, having seen, again and again, long-standing American values still firmly in place, good people involved in joint efforts to accomplish changes for the better, the American spirit still at work.” But, best of all, he gives a lesson or lessons in each speech.
At Hillsdale College in 2005, for instance, he quotes Daniel Boorstin, Barbara Tuchman, E.M. Forster, John and Abigail Adams, and speaks of such Signers as Benjamin Rush. Not surprisingly, all of his words are spoken from his love and appreciation of our history, which he implores us to learn. He shares how his friend Daniel Boorstin thought that “trying to plan for the future without a sense of the past is like trying to plant cut flowers”, and he cautions us that, “Citizenship isn’t just voting.” And he shows us how to be more than just voting citizens.
“Read. Read, read!” A command from a fellow citizen who knows the necessity of being informed.
Now, I am sure that when McCullough delivered these speeches he was thinking of our secular citizenship and the debt we owe our country. He is correct that a good citizen does more than vote in every election cycle. A good citizen reads and studies and thinks of history and the events and people who came before. And a good citizen understands that those folks were like us-fallible humans.
But McCullough’s words are applicable to another citizenship role in many of our lives—the role of citizenship in Christ. Just as we are told to read our secular history, we need to read and study not only the Bible but other sources concerning Christianity. Read the histories of Jesus’ world and better understand the forces He encountered. Read modern day Christian writers such as Clarence Jordan, Howard Thurman, C.S. Lewis, Samuel Wells, A.W. Tozer, or any number of the good writers available. Their words are reminders of how a Christian life should be lived, and when attending Sunday service do not act and think like the secular voter McCullough warns us against who believes that showing up is all that is required.
McCullough tells us that being a citizen requires more than voting just as Jesus tells us that being a Christ Follower requires more than sitting in a pew on Sunday. Both citizenships require action: Acts of study, thought, and deeds. Anything short is false.
By David Freeze
Fall Beginning Runners Class, Some Humor and Reflection
Summer has nearly flown by again, faster and faster as I get older. We had another wonderful dragonboat competition last week and our August Prediction Run is this Saturday morning, and then we are looking at September. With September comes our 21st Annual Fall Beginning Runners Class, this year starting on September 8th at the Salisbury Police Department, continuing our long-term relationship with the PD as they continue to host these classes.
Fall is the best time to take these classes because the training schedule will work its way through longer runs as the weather cools and humidity improves. Fall classes are usually smaller in number of participants, but that means more individual coaching time and typically a higher finisher percentage. Please think about joining us if you have wanted to be a runner and haven’t yet been able to make it happen. Or maybe you left running behind years ago and want to find it again.
Each Tuesday night, we will have a classroom topic that will include a class overview, shoes and equipment, stretching and strengthening, running form, injury prevention, nutrition and safety. Then we go out to run, and the first class will run/walk a half mile. Over the first seven weeks, we will gradually increase to running 2.5 miles. Then comes graduation night with the class completing one of our local 5K courses, followed by a graduation celebration complete with quality diplomas, a band and healthy refreshments.
With the class, each participant becomes a member of Salisbury Rowan Runners for a year, gets a training shirt and free entry into our Santa Run 5K in December. Participants also get a training schedule and coaching during and after the class. Cost of the class remains at $65, payable on runsignup.com or at the first class.
Many of our spring class are still running together and have several out-of-town race weekends planned. Taking the class is a great way to challenge yourself, meet others with similar interests and become active in a running club with many ongoing activities, both with running and otherwise.
My bike ride on the Katy Trail in Missouri was wonderful and just what I needed to challenge myself. With the hot weather and humidity of that week, I became focused on staying hydrated quickly. Everything seemed a little easier and more tame than my usual bicycle journeys, just as a friend pointed out last week. Some of those have lasted much longer and one topped out at 54 days. Long days on the road always had lots of humor. So did the ride on the Katy Trail. Here is the best humorous memory of that ride for me.
Many of the small Missouri towns had few stores and most were not open on Sundays and Mondays. According to my trail information, one town had a small hostile and several stores, plus a visitor center. The temperature was hot and at first look, none of the stores were open and no one was moving. I heard some talking and maybe a little music coming from a shaded spot on a hillside. I was nearly out of water and decided to take a chance.
I walked up a long series of stairs and found an open bar at the top. Inside, I found two operators and a group of three eating lunch with their bike helmets on. I thought that was odd, but some alcohol was involved with lots of laughing and giggling. I asked for bottled water and found it for $2.50 a bottle. I paid and began to leave when the one man in the group of eaters said, “What is that on your hip?” I said, “It’s a radio, AM-FM.” The man said, “Wow, I didn’t think they still existed, how old is it?” I said, “I bought it a couple nights ago on Amazon to listen to while riding.” A 20’s woman, also with him, said, “I can’t remember when I have seen one.” They all giggled, I grabbed my bottles and headed for my bike, never seeing them again which suited me.
Look for the Run for the Word 5K and Fun Run in Landis on September 12. Support the Bible teachers in our local schools. More information is at www.salisburyrowanrunners.org
And finally, I will miss Dolly Parton. She never passed up a chance to make the world better. Good for us all to do!