"We Will Never Forget..."

These are the words on almost every single American company's branding as you walk the city streets. These are the words that describe what every American feels at this time. What are they referring to? The lives lost ten years ago on 9/11. The brave men and women who came to the fore to provide emergency services and care for those who had had everything ripped away in a single instant. A nation that was brought together by terror.

I remember where I was ten years ago to this day. Walking in my local Spar to shop for snacks for the school trip we were taking the following day I noticed people watching TV with images of crashing planes. I paid little attention to this commotion - as a 7th grader would - until I got home to see our TV on the very same channel. Those crashing planes weren't fiction anymore. This was very much real life and, in fact, was going to be a reference point in history for everyone who was alive on planet earth at that time.

Fast forward ten years and I could have never guessed that I would be sitting in that exact once terror-strikken city myself. 

I sat in a church service that made me so emotional, yet also made me feel like a proud and resilient American (which I am not). You see, it's one thing to hear about people hurting and those that have gone through hardships, but a total other thing to live in their world. Their pain becomes your pain. You bleed when they bleed. 

In the beginning of the service, Ps Carl Lentz asks all those that have been directly affected or have lost someone by the happenings of 9/11 to stand up so they can be honoured for their resilience. My eyes tear up as I realise this is real right here, but at the same time I sense a tangible presence of God's unending love in the room as worship music plays in the background. It's in our times of desperate need that God is closest to us.

I honour every single American for their strength. I once might have thought that the events of 9/11 get over-reported, but being in the middle of it all ten years on, I also say 'we will never forget'.

"Now all I am, I lay at your feet. I'm humbled by the wonder of Your majesty. One thing I know, I find all I need in your unending love. In your unending love."

- Unending Love by Hillsong Live taken from the album God Is Able