We were in Philadelphia Pennsylvania that day, but not long after we happen to be in New York and I snapped this shot of the cross in the steel beams still standing at ground zero. At this point they had the streets cleared and fabric fencing around almost everything, but through a few holes in the fence you could just make out this cross. It was a sight no one could forget.
We haven’t been back since, but someday we will go back to visit the memorial. Each year the anniversary comes and the world still continues to change, sometimes in such dramatic fashion, but September 11th always seems to be such a surreal day.
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I am truly amazed at how much press Dove World Outreach Church in Gainesville, Florida is receiving for it’s planned burning of the Quran, or as they put it “International Burn a Koran Day” planned for this Saturday, September 11th. It truly shows how a message, any message good or bad, can spread in our world today. This is a 50 member “church” in a small town. Fifty members. How many millions of dollars will other churches (with far better messages) spend to get their message out, and much of the time with little effect. Our church, and many others like it, are helping to change lives locally, and all the way over in Africa, but that isn’t news of course.
Sometimes it is the “shock-and-awe” that makes a message go viral, and their message, Terry Jones’ message, has reached every corner of the earth at this point thanks to Hilary Clinton, Gen. David Petraeus, Attorney General Eric Holder, CNN, Fox News (Orlando), and every high profile person who mentions the Quran burning. Even the Vatican (multiple times) and the White House has weighed in, all giving semi-credibility to this tiny little “outreach center” and their “look at us burning” party.
Other churches have tried this, like the one in North Carolina who created a sign that said “The Koran Needs to be Flushed” and was later forced to leave the SBC. If you dig into “Dove World Outreach” you will see they are a “church” who is mainly focused on the “shock-and-awe” of Islam, not on teachings of Christ and Christianity.
What I haven’t read in any of these reports however is that no matter how much stupidity they claim as their own, the lack of any true sensical Christian message they offer, and the Adolph-Hitler-Natzi-like event this seems to be, this country has fought to allow these freedoms, even if we don’t like them. We don’t fight for only those freedoms we like, but for all freedoms within the law. What would dilute their message today is to heavily vet “Dove World”, Terry Jones, and their other fifty members. Their Facebook page alone is enough to discredit them, and their “about” information for their church shows no focus on any doctrinal beliefs of Christ, yet, today, shock-and-awe wins out.
I do not use the term “idiot” lightly. The dictionary definition says this is “someone who acts in a self-defeating or significantly counterproductive way”, and this is exactly what this group of 50 are doing, in many different aspects, but, in this country, they have the freedom to act like idiots, and others in turn have the freedom to condemn their actions as idiotic.
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This is the last and final, part 3 of this particular topic. If you missed the previous two posts, check them out at part 1 and part 2.
The Church: A Response to a Bad Economy?
I spend a good bit of my day running around on the Internet, and many places I stop are with people of faith, churches, organizations and groups trying to raise funds, in a “bad economy”. There are usually two responses. One (to me) Biblical, and one not. One based on fear, the other based on belief. One worried about their 401k balance, the other excited to see a time when the need for the church among the un-churched is growing.
Matthew 6:34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
What happened just after September 11th 2001? People ran to the church. Some because they were scared, some because they didn’t know where else to turn, some came back after a long time away, but the number of people attending church (doesn’t mean it was meaningful by the way) went up dramatically. What makes hitting people where it really counts (in their 401k’s) any different as far as possibilities within the church to help others?
I took this photo below at “Ground Zero” a few months after the terrorist attacks on New York city. They still had not torn down the last few damaged buildings that are outside the photo here, and this “cross” was still standing as well. It was incredible to me to see a cross, carved out of mangled steel, standing above all the mess that was ground zero. It was an unreal time of horror, terror, and despair in our country, and yet, Jesus didn’t change, the world did.
My church at the time in 2001 (a 35,000 member church) was trying to decide if they should start a $40 million building campaign in the middle of the 911 economic turmoil. They decided to follow God and not the economy and great things were done. Why should the church back down when times are bad? Be responsible yes, but fearful????
People are scared, people are fearful. Why? Uncertainty. If we are Believers… why are we living in fear and uncertainty? Because we can’t buy the normal $500-$1000 of Christmas presents this year? We have the most certain thing in the world. A risen Savior.
If you like the cross as a symbol you need to drive out I-40, past Amarillo, past Oklahoma City, and look at one of the largest crosses I have personally ever seen (first photo above). It is a magnificant symbol right on the interstate for all to see. We should be like this cross on I-40 in Oklahoma. Big, bold, tall, ready to reach out and help those who are hurting and searching. We should be excited to be in these “times”, they are new times of new opportunities. As the Church, let’s not watch this opportunity pass us by and wonder why we didn’t make use of this special time in our history.
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It is amazing how fast time goes by. It is hard to believe that today is the 7th anniversary of September 11, 2001. It was of course one of those days when we will all remember where we were, what we were doing, and looking back today at what happened on the news, as always happens on each September 11, I was just thinking back to what my wife and I were doing that day, and what was going on in our lives, and what has changed.
A few days before 9-11 we were in Texas, on our way to a convention in Pennsylvania. We often traveled with David and Georgia (Deborah’s parents) or met them in different campgrounds across the country going to or from a convention. They would drive their motorhome out to the show where ever it was and help us setup, work the show, and break down afterward. Here, we met them at a campground in Texas.
On the morning of September 11, 2001 Deborah and I woke up in a Walmart parking lot in Pennsylvania in our RV where we had spent the night. We were on our way to Philadelphia and stayed, as we normally did, in a Walmart parking lot just a little outside Philadelphia. As vendors, this was a convention we did each year but in years to follow would become less and less important because of the date (which sometimes fell exactly on 9-11) until the owners of the show finally moved it far away from 9-11.
I took these two photos of the news while watching the coverage from the back of our RV. What is interesting to me is, if you look just to the right of the TV, we had already hung an American flag in the window of our RV (and these were huge greyhound bus windows), much like many American’s did at their houses. We were living in the bus at the time, this was our home and we drove around the country for at least another year or more with that flag handing in the back window (one on each side).
I remember setting up for the show while running out to the motorhome every second I could to try and watch the news. The show was a terrible one for the vendors as no one wanted to do anything in the way of shopping. The restaurants in Philadelphia were closed when we would try to eat after the show each night, and we couldn’t wait to get out of there and on to the next city.
To the Grand Cayman Islands and Cayman Brac
It wasn’t but about two weeks later when we took our first plane flight out of the United States into the Cayman Islands. This was a planned trip, planned months before 9-11 every happened. We were going with Deborah’s parents, David and Georgia to a rented house on the small island of Cayman Brac. I can remember every single one of us being very nervous about flying when we had never really be nervous before. We had talked about canceling our trip, but decided we were going to do what we had planned on doing regardless.
I have very few photos of our trip down to the Cayman Islands. I was not shooting with any larger format camera at the time and only had a very small (and free) 2mp digital camera from HP, given to me as a type of extra for buying a printer. These were a few of the shots from that trip. We sat many hours of that “vacation” inside watching the news coverage of the events at ground zero, it was one of the strangest trips I have taken, but we did enjoy each other’s company.
Now it is 7 years later and things are much different. Time has a way of keeping thing moving. I look at the photo above and remember by mother-in-law who is no longer with us. In this photo she looks so alive and well, and Deborah and I both miss her. The four of us in the photo above (counting me who is taking the photo) did so many things together back at that time. We no longer have the business we had then, and part of it was the effect 9-11 had on the circuit of shows we were vending at for many years.
We now no longer have the bus pictured above that we lived in for more than 5 years. We have different jobs, live in a different part of the country, have new and different friends, and of course are 7 years older. One thing I love about blogging is the archives. You can go back and see what you were doing and how things have changed in your life. We started blogging in March of 2001, but have very few original posts from that time period, but it is interesting to see how we have grown and changed.
What were you doing on September the 11th, 2001?
