Our Next July 4?

Our Next July 4?

We could hear the church bells ringing this morning out our window at the 9/11 memorial ceremony as we observed a moment of silence at 8:48 a.m. to remember. What really got me, though, was when I walked past the site and heard some of the names being called out by parents of the victims, their voices alternating between bravely strong and quivering with emotion.

There will always be something awful about this day every year, a wound reopened fresh over a healing scar. I hope that it will continue to serve as a unifying force in our country, an annual rallying cry against those in the world who threaten our way of life and seek to hurt or terrify us. It’s not exactly Independence Day, but perhaps it can over time come to mean something just as important for America.