9/11 Remembered

I was working on the morning of Sept 11th, 2001.  It happened to be my prep hour, so I had the TV on CNN just to have some background noise and hear if anything interesting was going on.  When the first plane hit the coverage was mostly just the tower on fire with speculation by the commentators about what might have caused it.  As I continued to watch, the second plane came in and hit the 2nd tower.  The modern world as we understood it, was over.  Americans had been enjoying a false sense of security, the end of the Cold War removing the last "threat" to our hegemony and allowing us to ponder whether we were at the "end of history" or not. 
The world we live in today is one where man's inhumanity to his fellow man is never far from the news headlines.  Rarely does a week go by when someone isn't blowing up innocent men, women, and children to make a political statement.  The casual dismissal of the value of human life that we've now grown accustomed to is shocking.  We used to be able to convince ourselves that such evil was confined (such as in Northern Ireland or Somalia); that it wasn't able to get out and penetrate the "civilized" world.  After 9/11 (and the subsequent bombings in Spain and England) we have become all to aware that the evil of humanity can never be "contained" through force of arms or police agencies.  Those who wish to kill for their own ends will always be a threat to those who try to protect and serve.  God bless our soldiers and police who risk their lives in this struggle.
For the past eight years we have been seeking military, political, diplomatic, and economic answers to the ugly question posed that fateful morning.  Sadly, these efforts are doomed to, at best, partial success.  We may be able to eliminate individuals or groups who seek to kill, but we cannot eliminate the evil that spawns the hatred that breeds them anew. 
In the end, this is just another sad example of man's entirely lost status apart from God.  If we don't worship God, we'll follow something else.  If we don't value life because God created it, we'll eventually find a reason to not value it at all.  As necessary as these other solutions may be, our battle is indeed not against flesh and blood; it is a spiritual battle for the hearts and minds of mankind.  Every soul that comes to know the grace and peace of Jesus Christ is a victory in this war.
May the LORD keep our loved ones safe from this evil, may the LORD protect those who defend the innocent, and may the LORD turn the hearts of those who hate that they may find the love of Christ.