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| Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 |
President Franklin D. Roosevelt stamped it into history as "A Day that shall live in infamy." The images are very real in the minds of a generation that actually experienced the naked aggression of Imperialist Japan in an attack on American territorial soil. The effrontery of that surprise attack is being lost with the passing of those men and women who wakened that Sunday morning to the onslaught of dive bombers strafing the American fleet at anchor. Many of them lived with the smell of burning diesel, the the images of human carnage, the whines of overhead aircraft buzzing in their nightmares. That Day would set the course for The Greatest Generation's resolve to vanquish fascist tyranny in its threats to our allies around the world. Visitors to the USS Battleship Arizona Memorial may go this day to be reminded of the events and historical antecedents leading to the tragedy.
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| NYC, September 11, 2001 |
The present generations have seared in their conscious memory our Day of Infamy. The late summer brightness of Tuesday, September 11, 2001 was shattered mid morning when Islamo-fascist terrorists flew hijacked airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and Pentagon on their suicide mission to strike fear into the American people and to effect a grand protest against the West. We shall never forget the brutality of the events, etched in our memories of desperate people leaping to a better death than burning alive; the suffocating tsunamis of dust and debris raking through the canyons of the city, a charred gaping hole in the southwest side of Fortress Pentagon, smoking vapors emanating from a hole in the rural countryside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Pain and emotion sculptor's tools which chisel into our memories events that we would just as soon forget; if it were not for the requirement to distill from these events the reaffirmation of our core values and commitments. It is these aspects of our humanity that make the difference whether we come through the fire refined or destroyed. Our resilience as a people, as a nation of families, communities and constituent groups is bolstered in part by the way we hold on to our beliefs and convictions with courage, humility and faithful resolve. Certainly these earthquaking events will demand of us a reexamination of our identity as a nation. They will also expose our idols.
As a Christian I enjoy the blessing of a pastor who provides Biblical Christo-centric perspective on events like these as well as the slower boiling aggravations of the so-called fiscal cliff, the growing hostility toward cultural Christianity (what to do about all the Nativity scene protests), the disintegration of Judeo-Christian consensus in social and moral issues such as abortion and homosexual "marriage." He has helped us see that God is excising the Mushy Middle and preparing a leaner, more Biblically faithful Remnant Church (cf. Micah 5.7) Our journey through the Book of Acts is reminding us that through great testing and tribulation, God's Word spread, moving from a Jewish ethno-centrism to a greater Gentile universalism in the offer of the Gospel.
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| Calvary, Good Friday, 33 A.D. |
On a personal level I am painfully aware of my proneness to using "busyness" as a justification for not stopping and reflecting on the significance of key days of infamy. ("Afterall I have a regular life to live.") Thankfully within the rhythm of my covenant community we have regular and appropriately frequent remembrances of the Great Day of Infamy - Day of Glory. In the Lord's Supper, our pastor brings Word and Sign together as Sacrament, not so that we may wallow in the gory of the Cross. But that the Glory of the Cross will inflame in our remembrance, burn in our hearts, activate in our wills the reality of a Saviour who spared no expense in ransoming a people for the Triune God. In those sacramental observances, not only is the history of Calvary depicted afresh, but the living reality of the Saviour who keeps his promises and never fails his people, is experienced.
See you at The Potter's Wheel
G.K. Sexton
The Cross
