Twenty-five years ago today, the world changed.

Twenty-five years ago today, the world changed.

September 11, 2001 began like an ordinary Tuesday. People went to work. Parents kissed their kids goodbye. Flights took off. Coffee was poured. Meetings were scheduled. Families made plans for that evening and for the days ahead.

And then, in a matter of moments, everything changed.

Most of us who were old enough to remember can still picture where we were when we heard the news. We watched images that did not seem real. Smoke pouring from the towers. People running through the streets. Sirens everywhere. Then another plane. Another building. Another report. The terrible realization that this was not an accident.

We watched the towers fall.
We watched thousands of ordinary lives suddenly become part of history.

But that day also revealed something about people.

While so many were running away from danger, others were running directly toward it. Firefighters climbed stairways knowing that everyone else was trying desperately to get down. Police officers, paramedics, first responders, coworkers, and complete strangers helped people they had never met. Men and women stepped into smoke, fire, rubble, and unimaginable danger because someone needed them.

Some of them never came back out.

There are stories from that day that still stop me in my tracks. Courage that was not planned. Sacrifice that was not rehearsed. People who simply saw someone in need and decided that their own safety would not be the most important thing in that moment.

Heroes were revealed that day.
And then something else happened.
For a little while, we came together.

Flags appeared everywhere. Churches filled. Strangers talked to one another. People prayed openly. Differences that had seemed so important the week before suddenly did not seem quite as important anymore.

We remembered that life is fragile.
We remembered that we need one another.
We remembered that there are moments when the things that divide us become incredibly small compared to the things that unite us.

Twenty-five years have now passed.

For many of us, September 11 has become a memory. A photograph. A documentary. A chapter in a history book. But for thousands of families, it never became history.

There are sons and daughters who grew up without a parent. Husbands and wives who never got another ordinary morning together. Parents who buried children. Families who have now carried an empty seat through twenty-five Thanksgivings, twenty-five Christmases, birthdays, graduations, weddings, births of grandchildren, and countless moments when they would have given anything for one more conversation.

There is now an entire generation of children and grandchildren living inside the story of a person they may barely remember, or perhaps never had the chance to meet.

So today, I hope we do more than post a picture and say, “Never forget.”

I hope we PRAY.

Pray specifically for the families whose lives were forever divided into “before September 11” and “after September 11.”

Pray for the firefighters, police officers, first responders, survivors, military families, and countless others who carried the weight of that day long after the smoke disappeared from the skyline.

Pray for those who still carry grief that twenty-five years cannot erase.

And maybe today should cause us to think about our own lives as well.

One of the hardest truths September 11 taught us is that tomorrow is never promised. James writes that our lives are “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.” That is not meant to make us live afraid. I think it is meant to make us live awake.

Our lives are short. Which means they matter. You are here right now, in this moment in history, for a reason.

There are people you are supposed to love. There is forgiveness you may need to give. There are words you need to say. There are people who need your encouragement. There is good you can do that someone else may never be able to do in quite the same way.

And above everything else, there is a God who loves you and a Savior who stepped into our broken world so that death would not have the final word.

Faith does not mean pretending tragedy does not hurt. Faith means believing that even in the darkest places, God is still present.

September 11 showed us the worst of what human beings are capable of.

It also showed us some of the very best.

Courage.
Sacrifice.
Compassion.
Unity.
Love for a neighbor.

People willing to give everything so that someone else might live.

Twenty-five years later, may we remember them. May we honor the families who still carry their absence.

May we PRAY.

May we love people while we still have the opportunity. May we refuse to waste the days we have been given. And may we live with the kind of faith, courage, compassion, and purpose that remembers this life is short… but it is never meaningless.

September 11, 2001.
Twenty-five years later.
We will never forget.

Today, we PRAY.