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September 11, 2004
Today is September 11, 2004
It makes me sad to think that this moment in our history has confused this nation so much. I am grieved terribly for the families involved in this tragegy, but the thing that saddens me more is the fact that this tragedy still continues today — not only for those families, but for us as well (and even more for the families that have lost sons and daughters to a meaningless battle ever since). And that is a bigger tragedy than the first — I should only be grieving for the families of 9/11, but because of the events that have followed, I grieve for our entire country.
Lord Jesus, please end this war.
Posted at 08:08 am
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Comments (3):
Tim:
I read your blog posting “Today is September 11, 2004” just shortly after having met for breakfast with a good friend of mine who is also an engineer with our company. He was originally from Iran, but has long been a US citizen and has a wonderful family here. We were discussing the 9/11 experience. He pointed out to me that not only has it impacted our country, but the world as a whole has changed. He is feeling the impact from the standpoint of his religion (Islamic) and members of his family still living in the Middle East. He is very upest with what this is doing to his religion and sees a tremendous struggle within his own faith. According to him, most Islamic people do not side with the terrorists, but feel even more powerless in the face of their terror than we do. He is especially worried that the long term effects to his Islamic Faith will not be good.
However, then we got into a discussion about Christianity and periods when the Christian faith was going through upheveals and tested. Then we saw some interesting parallels as we looked back at both of the faiths historically and the “maturing process” (sorry, that’s the best term we could come up with). If you consider the Islamic faith, which is several hundred years more recent than Christianity, but put them on parallel timelines from there inception dates you’ll see similar changes at times about the same distance for both from their inception. This was no scholarly study, but something we mapped out on the back of a resturant paper placemat and using dates and times from memory. Unfortunately, we came to no conclusion, but I felt the observation was very interesting, and would indicate Islam still has a couple hundred more years of turmoil before it settles into a more peaceful means of conflict resolution, and becomes more tolerant. I personally hope it’s sooner than that, but that’s the conclusion we came to. I wonder if any study has been done elsewhere in a more exact way to look at this parallel development.
I read your blog posting “Today is September 11, 2004” just shortly after having met for breakfast with a good friend of mine who is also an engineer with our company. He was originally from Iran, but has long been a US citizen and has a wonderful family here. We were discussing the 9/11 experience. He pointed out to me that not only has it impacted our country, but the world as a whole has changed. He is feeling the impact from the standpoint of his religion (Islamic) and members of his family still living in the Middle East. He is very upest with what this is doing to his religion and sees a tremendous struggle within his own faith. According to him, most Islamic people do not side with the terrorists, but feel even more powerless in the face of their terror than we do. He is especially worried that the long term effects to his Islamic Faith will not be good.
However, then we got into a discussion about Christianity and periods when the Christian faith was going through upheveals and tested. Then we saw some interesting parallels as we looked back at both of the faiths historically and the “maturing process” (sorry, that’s the best term we could come up with). If you consider the Islamic faith, which is several hundred years more recent than Christianity, but put them on parallel timelines from there inception dates you’ll see similar changes at times about the same distance for both from their inception. This was no scholarly study, but something we mapped out on the back of a resturant paper placemat and using dates and times from memory. Unfortunately, we came to no conclusion, but I felt the observation was very interesting, and would indicate Islam still has a couple hundred more years of turmoil before it settles into a more peaceful means of conflict resolution, and becomes more tolerant. I personally hope it’s sooner than that, but that’s the conclusion we came to. I wonder if any study has been done elsewhere in a more exact way to look at this parallel development.
Larry barbary () - September 13, 2004 at 10:55 am
That is really interesting, Larry… I’d love to see that sometime — especially if made more “exact” by using actual historical time-periods. Wow.
timsamoff () (URL) - September 13, 2004 at 11:43 am
Tim:
If I get a free day this winter, and a couple of history books I’ll be able to do just that. However, I’m hoping this has occured to someone else before and the work is already done somewhere. Either way, if I get it in a more defined form and transmittable format, I’ll send it to you. I’m going to try an internet search first, as I know I’m not much of an original thinker so someone else must have done this already somewhere. I’ll let you know.
If I get a free day this winter, and a couple of history books I’ll be able to do just that. However, I’m hoping this has occured to someone else before and the work is already done somewhere. Either way, if I get it in a more defined form and transmittable format, I’ll send it to you. I’m going to try an internet search first, as I know I’m not much of an original thinker so someone else must have done this already somewhere. I’ll let you know.
Larry Barbary () - September 13, 2004 at 12:44 pm
