It’s the day before the world changed for us. The air ws crisp and cool. Er were all going about our daily business. That morning we read about an Afghan leader we had probably never heard of, a man named Massoud assassinated at his headquarters in Afghanistan. There was general economic anxiety over the dot com bust, but on the whole everything else seemed so normal.
Little did anyone know that several men were making the last stages of their plans to strike at us in such a terrifying way. In some sense it must have felt the same in early December 1941 before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. At that time there was anxiety over the war in Europe, Hitler having rolled over Western Europe with his Panzer divisions.
But in another way, 2001 was different from 1941. Our concerns with the Japanese conquests in East Asia were more geopolitical as Japan conquered China and moved into the Philippines the day after hitting Pearl Harbor. America rallied in 1941 and again in 2001, but this war would be different with tragic results in the end.
Prayer for the Day
What is it that we cry for when we pray for peace, O God,
Facing distant adversaries whom we do not understand?
Troubled by the turmoil we see around us, O Lord,
We search for answers to questions not even asked.
Guide us as we struggle to live past our memories,
And move us into a future that holds more than a promise.
In the name of the One who struggles with us,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
The Pearl Harbor attack, for all its perfidy, was a strike on the American military. When the hijackers commandeered civilian planes and crashed them into the World Trade Center, they attacked janitors and cooks, waiters and stockbrokers, ordinary moms and dads.
David French, opinion piece, September 10, 2026
Men never do evil so completely and so cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.
Blaise Pascal, French philosopher, mathematician (1623-1662)
Protect me, O Go, for in you I take refuge.
I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”
Psalm 16: 1-2