NOW that the President has called us to prayer.....

NOW that Congress has called us to prayer.....

NOW that our Governor has called us to prayer....

NOW that the city Mayor has called us to prayer....

NOW that the "liberal" media and most other branches of
our American society have called us to prayer.....

AND NOW that our churches are assembling in special prayer....

"Honorable" Justices of the Supreme Court, I have only one question..
Would it be O.K. to pray in our schools........??

An American
Citizen & Christian

WHERE WAS GOD?

"I know you're mad at Me right now. That's alright. People have been mad at Me before and will be again. Being mad is part of being human. My Son got mad, too. It's alright to be mad sometimes at injustice, for example, or the lack of charity."

"You probably think I am unjust and uncharitable when an airplane goes down like that. All those people lost. The children gone. It doesn't seem right; it can't be loving. You ask, 'Where was God?' Why did He allow that to happen?"

"I allow it to happen because I allow you freedom. I could have left you on a string and made you dance all day without getting tired. I could have moved your mouth for you and made you sing all night without growing hoarse. 

I could have pulled a wire that would have let you soar skyward and never fall."

"I could have, but I didn't because I love you so much. I want you to be free to decide when to dance and sing. Free to determine when you will come to Me in faith and hope. Because you are free, some of you choose not to dance or sing. Some of you select hatred over love, revenge over forgiveness, bombs over a helping hand. As you choose, I watch. I do not disappear. I listen to both the songs and the bombs. AND I REMEMBER."

"Where was God?" you wonder...I was there. I whispered in the ear of a little girl, 'Don't be afraid, I am with you.' I held the hand of a business woman as tightly as she clutched mine. I cradled a pilot against my shoulder as if he were a baby again."

"Amid the paralyzing fear, I was there, as I was there with my Son in the garden. Amid the unbearable pain, I was there, as I was with Him as He was whipped. Amid the terrible realization that life was ending too soon, I was there, with Him as He hung on the cross and asked, like you, "My God, why have you forsaken Me?"

"I had not forsaken Him. I did not forsake them. I was there as they fell, and as they rose to eternal joy. I listened to their anger, answered their questions and showed them why they had been created. Not to end that way, but to live with Me forever."

"In an instant, they came into existence. As you did. In an  instant, they left this world. As you will. But beyond that last  instant, I kept my promise...A little girl dances, a business woman sings, and a pilot keeps his wings forever." 

The Way Terrorists Are Handled In The Middle East
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Join a Discussion on Thomas L. Friedman's Columns

In February 1982 the secular Syrian government of President Hafez al- Assad faced a mortal threat from Islamic extremists, who sought to topple the Assad regime. How did it respond? President Assad identified the rebellion as emanating from Syria's fourth-largest city — Hama — and he literally leveled it, pounding the fundamentalist neighborhoods with artillery for days. Once the guns fell silent, he plowed up the rubble and bulldozed it flat, into vast parking lots. Amnesty International estimated that 10,000 to 25,000 Syrians, mostly civilians, were killed in the merciless crackdown. Syria has not had a Muslim extremist problem since.

I visited Hama a few months after it was leveled. The regime actually wanted Syrians to go see it, to contemplate Hama's silence and to reflect on its meaning. I wrote afterward, "The whole town looked as though a tornado had swept back and forth over it for a week — but this was not the work of mother nature."

This was "Hama Rules" — the real rules of Middle East politics — and Hama Rules are no rules at all. I tell this story not to suggest this should be America's approach. We can't go around leveling cities. We need to be much more focused, selective and smart in uprooting the terrorists.

No, I tell this story because it's important that we understand that Syria, Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia have all faced Islamist threats and crushed them without mercy or Miranda rights. Part of the problem America now faces is actually the fallout from these crackdowns. Three things happened:

First, once the fundamentalists were crushed by the Arab states they fled to the last wild, uncontrolled places in the region — Lebanon's Bekaa Valley and Afghanistan — or to the freedom of America and Europe.

Second, some Arab regimes, most of which are corrupt dictatorships afraid of their own people, made a devil's pact with the fundamentalists. They allowed the Islamists' domestic supporters to continue raising money, ostensibly for Muslim welfare groups, and to funnel it to the Osama bin Ladens — on the condition that the Islamic extremists not attack these regimes. The Saudis in particular struck that bargain.

Third, these Arab regimes, feeling defensive about their Islamic crackdowns, allowed their own press and intellectuals total freedom to attack America and Israel, as a way of deflecting criticism from themselves.

As a result, a generation of Muslims and Arabs have been raised on such distorted views of America that despite the fact that America gives Egypt $2 billion a year, despite the fact that America fought for the freedom of Muslims in Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo, and despite the fact that Bill Clinton met with Yasir Arafat more than with any other foreign leader, America has been vilified as the biggest enemy of Islam. And that is one reason that many people in the Arab-Muslim world today have either applauded the attack on America or will tell you — with a straight face — that it was all a C.I.A.-Mossad plot to embarrass the Muslim world.

We need the moderate Arab states as our partners — but we don't need only their intelligence. We need them to be intelligent. I don't expect them to order their press to say nice things about America or Israel. They are entitled to their views on both, and both at times deserve criticism. But what they have never encouraged at all is for anyone to consistently present an alternative, positive view of America — even though they were sending their kids here to be educated. Anyone who did would be immediately branded a C.I.A. agent.

And while the Arab states have crushed their Islamic terrorists, they have never confronted them ideologically and delegitimized their behavior as un-Islamic. Arab and Muslim Americans are not part of this problem. But they could be an important part of the solution by engaging in the debate back in the Arab world, and presenting another vision of America.

So America's standing in the Arab-Muslim world is now very low — partly because we have not told our story well, partly because of policies we have adopted and partly because inept, barely legitimate Arab leaders have deliberately deflected domestic criticism of themselves onto us. The result: We must now fight a war against terrorists who are crazy and evil but who, it grieves me to say, reflect the mood in their home countries more than we might think. 

Stand Firm, America!
by Audrey Yoeckel

I am so dismayed. There are citizens being attacked! Guilty of nothing, these good folks not only have to deal with the knowledge that there has been a supreme atrocity committed by some lunatics who happen to claim the same roots and religion they do, they stand accused by some folks who would paint them as "enemy" with the broad brush of intolerance.

Three firebombings of Mosques so far in Texas, similar and worse acts of violence carried out everywhere accross the nation for one reason only. There are some folks whose hearts already full of bigotry and hatred look for any opportunity to carry out violent acts against those who are vulnerable. These bigots have no business using our tragedy as an excuse to compound that tragedy by harming others. This is not American. It goes against everything we stand for as a nation.

We need to understand that American Arabs, Moslems and others of Middle-Eastern origin are not guilty of anything and have lost as much as the rest of us. We need to know that, as Americans living under our wonderful Constitution and Bill of Rights, it is our duty to defend them against the aberrant among us, to not allow these acts to be carried out by our neighbors against our neighbors. It is our duty to protect and defend our brothers. Would anybody stand by today and watch Nazis or the KKK send this kind of message to the rest of the world? It diminishes and shames us. When you attack my neighbor, you attack me.

If you have hatred in your heart against anyone at this time, then pray for deliverance from the bondage of it. Do not act on it. That is also our responsibility to our nation and our God.

We can only rise above tyranny by reaching out to all our neighbors and standing firm against it. Only by linking arm-in-arm against injustice will we ever be a strong and unconquerable nation.

copyright 9 14,2001 Audrey Yoeckel

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contact: ayoeckel@yahoo.com