This Broken World

Today's the 10-year anniversary of 9/11. So I was thinking about that day, ten years ago. I remember distinctly being in journalism class, around 10 am. Senior year of high school. We had no TV, no radio, no way of knowing what had already happened. Our assignment was to look at newspaper articles from that day's paper. I forget what we had to do with them.

But I'd had a similar assignment in elementary school and I remember thinking then how hard it was to find good news at the time. And on this day in 2001, I had a hard time finding an article that was bad news. I was really impressed. Completely oblivious to the tragedy our country was facing, I was thinking, "Wow! There's a lot of good news today! Maybe our world is getting a little better."

Then it was lunch time. And word was spreading about the attacks. My friend Mindy was the one who told me about the news. She just had little pieces of information - news was limited in the confines of our high school. I didn't even get what a big deal it was until my next class, where I got more info from my teacher (who'd listened to the radio over lunch).

But looking back I realize how foolish I was to put hope in this broken world. It was busted within an hour, as well it should've been. Our world is full of tragedy, most not as personal as 9/11 was for our country. But every day this world is facing tragedies. There's no hope in what this world has to offer, because it's full of sinful people, some hateful enough to kill mass numbers of people.

No, the only thing worth hoping in is Jesus. He is the one who will never let you down.