There have been several moments in my life where I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing. The first of such events was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I was thirteen and home from school, with a cold, when our neighbor came running in the back door and with tears in her eyes cried out, “They killed the President.” It was an event that dramatically changed our nation. It is said that each generation has an event to remember. For my children it is the Challenger Space Disaster on January 28, 1986. For them the name Christa McAuliffe, a school teacher from New Hampshire and the first teacher in space, is familiar. Outside America there are other events – the assassination of the President of Rwanda that lead to the Rwanda Genocide, the floods in Pakistan, the typhoon that killed thousands in Manila just a few short months ago. These tragedies in some way remind us over and over again that life is fragile and unpredictable.
Read more: Nine Eleven. Reflections From Our Patriarch, Bishop Craig Bates