Empty Chairs on Patriots Day.

I did not know until a few weeks ago that September 11^th is Patriot Day. I know that it is important in our national identity and that since then our world is significantly different. Each year I take a few minutes to reflect on the events of 2001 and where we have been since. First off I remember the day of where I was, who I talked to, I was in college so we all wondered if there would be a draft to go into a full scale conflict with an enemy nation. Over the past eleven years I have had the conversation a few dozen times.

Today I cant help being heart broken over the empty chairs. Families, some of whom I know, that have an empty chair at the dinner table. For some the vacancy is temporary, but for some that chair will remain empty. I daily go to my work convinced that I would go to death for the cause of Christ, these empty chairs are a reminder of our friends who for the zeal of their cause actually went to death or are at least in harms way.

The last time the United States engaged in a conflict that so robbed us of our innocence Abraham Lincoln declared ever third Thursday of November a national day of Thanksgiving. So we remember in this time the loss of innocents and life in the last eleven years with “Patriots Day.”

While others may use today to Pray for our nations safety or ignore it and go on about their day so as not to deal with what ever feeling they may or may not have; I am going to use today to pray. I am praying for Empty Chairs, I am praying for the families that inhabit the tables around them. I am praying for the men who only see their families over Skype and those who are learning to cope with a life long injury that they are bringing home. I will pray that as I conjure up feeling of Patriotism they are pushing back feelings of loss.

Let us never forget the hope of Christianity. That the mourner shall be comforted that the orphan and the widow have a heavenly advocate, and the dead shall live again.

God Bless.