Remembering ….

NOTE — please be aware that starting next week (on September 27th), this weekly devotion will start posting on Wednesday mornings.  As we strive to find the right posting balance between the variety of weekly events that air on our website, it seems to make the most sense for us to move the “airing” of this weekly devotion on Wednesday of each week.  We have a couple of larger posts that debut over the weekend, and we need a few larger ones to air in the middle of the week also, so as to create some balance.  Thank you for supporting this change, and for your faithful reading and praying through these offering these many years, now.      ~~~Pastor Ross

EMAIL DEVOTIONAL
Pentecost 15

You will forget your misery;  you will remember it as waters that have passed away.  (Job 11:16)

Our grandson came home from preschool this week talking about the twins.  His mother asked about what she thought might be new students in the class, but he corrected her by connecting the story of the “twins” to a plane.  Ahhh … those “twins.”  I give his preschool credit for trying to instill a bit of the complicated emotions surrounding the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 into a class of four-year-olds.  That had to be a tangled tango of conversation on the dual dance floors of simplicity and chaos.

Since Sam spent the weekend with us, we decided to bring him over to the 911 Memorial on the Overlook Park campus near the MT Library, and show him the steel beam that has been placed there.  We explained that it was a part of the original Trade Center … the “twins” as he thinks of them … brought to our town in an effort to remember and honor those who died that day.  He could comprehend that as a fact, but I suspect it has been hard for him to really integrate it into his thoughts.  Sometimes it is hard for me to integrate it into my thought and reflection.

When we memorialize things and events and people, there is an odd tension at work, right?  The tension between dwelling in the past and growing into the future … the friction between grieving and celebrating … the contrast between holding on and letting go … the rhythm between life and death.  There is an almost inevitable spirit of incompleteness.

That seems to still be the case with the 9/11 events.  A few too many loose ends … a bit too much of an irresolute spirit.  As a country we have moved on … but not completely and with wholeness.  So if part of your devotional life last week was to remember those lost – those families traumatized by the events – and those whose lives were forever changed … maybe this week you might consider praying for the right balance between light and darkness in this spectrum of the memorial work that we engage in many circumstance, but especially around the anniversary of this event which truly seems to have changed the way we look at life in America.  May you find some balance and some peace in your reflection.