Remember where you were January 28, 1986? I was watching the Challenger lift-off in a hospital waiting room, with family of a church member who was in surgery. Almost everywhere, children in classrooms were watching a teacher go into space. Almost like a short video clip in a corner of my mind, the audio and the sight of the break-up is a very clear memory.
Remember where you were when............... and you have a list. September 11, or "the bad news", or a very personal crisis that no one else even knew about, there's a list hidden away in your mind. But Challenger was one shared by so very many, live on TV, vivid.
God designed those memory banks to help us grapple with life. (There are people who pretend not to "grapple", but it never really works out that way.) Rich and poor, educated or not, we all experience pretty much the same kinds of drama.
Sometimes living in a small community, we hear negative things about "those folks over there", who, of course, hear the same "spin" about us. When my dad grew up in Bullard, he said the most difficult thing about going to Jacksonville when he first met my mom was getting through Mount Selman without having problems with the Bullard/Mt. Selman rivalry! "We weren't supposed to like each other!"
Were they different? Not really. Were they competitive? Oh yes. Did it make any sense? Not at all! Same thing today.
We're all on the same boat, cut from the same cloth, or, as the Bible says, made from the same dust. If it weren't for God (and not ourselves) we just wouldn't BE.
So, why not focus on the common things that unite us, even the tragedy whose anniversary is today, and remember whose we are. Americans, Somalis, British, Greeks, Germans, so much, much more alike than we are different. Thank God before we celebrate ourselves, and all of life looks so much better!
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