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O Lord, I remember your name in the night, and keep your law.
-Psalm 119:55
Forgetting is an easy thing to do; much harder than remembering. When events of significance happen, especially tragedies, someone always says, "Remember!" It's been said about the Alamo, Pearl Harbor,
D-Day, and countless other dates of infamy, including September 11th, 2001. But remembering is hard to do. Our brains are hardwired to forget as much as possible most days, in order for us to be able to try to remember what we deem important.
In order to remember, we create holidays, memorials, stories, and movies. We write songs and teach our children, and we recall our memories annually. Because otherwise, the busyness of our lives gets in the way, and memories fade. And sometimes, the very places we live make it easy to forget that the rest of the country or world experiences life differently. It would be easy to forget in most of the U.S. that war goes on in other countries, including a war that started on September 11th. We now have children born that day who are old enough to be deployed to that war, a generation of war. And in our bubble of Johns Creek, it would be easy to forget that the diversity and relative peace we enjoy is not common to even our whole country and that there have been shootings at houses of worship and white power rallies in other cities.
Memory still remains a powerful tool for learning lessons and working for peace. I was reminded of that this week. Yesterday, on September 11th, as I walked through the preschool, I heard the lyrical voice of one of our teachers, a beautiful British accent, articulating the words of our pledge of allegiance with a chorus of children. I peeked in to see a beautiful display of a small child holding a tiny flag proudly and his classmates, a true representation of the diversity of our community, God's kingdom, and likely, those in the towers and planes that day. They spoke the words that they were one nation and indivisible. They will remember those words for a lifetime, as most of us do. And the country and world they inherit will depend on how we choose to remember and live as a unified people, or choose to be divided. I pray we leave them a world of hope.
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