On September 11, 2001 I said my first prayer. My son was a police officer with the New York Police Department.

The hum in the office grew as people filtered in that morning. Soft chuckles over some incident the night before, muffled conversations and ringing phones filled the air. Suddenly, an urgent tone broke in. The first reports of a possible tragedy began circulating, and while some employees wrapped up phone calls, one or two turned [...]

When both US president Barack Obama and Catholic Pope Benedict XVI advise you that your plans are a bad idea, that’s usually a good sign that you should think twice about what you’re doing. Terry Jones would be well advised to listen to their advice. His tiny 30 member group, ironically named the “Dove World [...]

A recent issue of O, The Oprah Magazine featured a quiz that used a pie chart to plot how you spend your day.  The quiz was in two parts. Part one plotted what you actually do now and part two was a list of things you love doing. The last part of the task involved [...]

Connect in the Comments

One of the most active and honest places in online ministry is the comment section. Claire Colvin recently moderated a comment from a young girl who’d been bullied and already tried to commit suicide once before. She wrote: “I’m 13. Maybe I’ll turn 14 in September.” Volunteers who help respond to these kinds of comments [...]

Disbelief. Terror. Helplessness. Anger. Fear. Patriotism. Anxiety. We’ve run the gamut of emotions since September 11, 2001. How can you predict to what depths your spirits will plummet, when you’re faced with a horror you never could have imagined?“ We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” Franklin Roosevelt once declared. Oh, but not so, [...]

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God In Unlikely Places

When tragedy strikes and you went searching for God, where would you go? Would you search for Him in churches around the perimeter of your home? Would you run up a mountain and search for Him in the heavens? When you’re knee deep in despair and faced with the ever-important question about God’s existence, what [...]

Before September 11, evil of this magnitude was impossible to think about. The idea that it could happen in the United States seemed ridiculous. The attacks happened years ago, but it hurts as if it was yesterday. There’s a line in a poem by Emily Dickinson that describes the process of grieving as, “first – [...]

School’s out and the kids are all at home. If you’re looking for ideas to make summer more enjoyable, don’t miss  Michele Borba’s article, “Sanity Savers”.  A little prep and a few simple rules can make play dates a treat for everyone – even you! To begin with, Michelle recommends extra-kid-proofing your house. Chances are [...]

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Looking for Answers

Shoshy is an EMT for the city of New York, and her son is a police officer.  On September 11, her son was about to walk into the south tower when his boss sent him back to the van to get more equipment.  Moments later the tower fell.  Where do you turn when the world is [...]