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DO YOU NOT KNOW?
HAVE YOU NOT HEARD?
HAS IT NOT BEEN TOLD YOU FROM THE BEGINNING?
HAVE YOU NOT UNDERSTOOD
SINCE THE EARTH
WAS FOUNDED?
HE SITS ENTHRONED ABOVE A CIRCLE OF THE EARTH,
AND IT'S PEOPLE ARE LIKE
GRASSHOPPERS.
HE STRETCHES OUT THE HEAVENS LIKE A CANOPY,
AND SPREADS THEM OUT LIKE
A TENT TO LIVE IN.
"TO WHOM WILL YOU COMPARE ME?
OR WHO IS MY EQUAL?"
SAYS THE HOLY ONE.
LIFT YOUR EYES AND LOOK TO THE HEAVENS:
WHO CREATED ALL THESE?
HE WHO BRINGS OUT THE STARRY HOST ONE BY ONE
AND CALLS THEM EACH BY
NAME.
BECAUSE OF HIS GREAT POWER AND MIGHTY STRENGTH,
NOT ONE OF THEM IS MISSING.
DO YOU NOT KNOW?
HAVE YOU NOT HEARD?
THE LORD IS THE EVERLASTING GOD,
THE CREATOR OF THE
ENDS OF THE EARTH.
HE WILL NOT GROW TIRED OF WEARY,
AND HIS UNDERSTANDING
NO ONE CAN FATHOM.
HE GIVES TO THE WEARY,
AND INCREASES THE
POWER OF THE WEAK.
EVEN YOUTH GROW TIRED AND WEARY
AND YOUNG MEN STUMBLE
AND FALL;
BUT THOSE WHO HOPE IN THE LORD
WILL RENEW THEIR
STRENGTH.
THEY WILL SOAR ON WINGS LIKE EAGLES;
THEY WILL RUN AND
NOT GROW WEARY,
THEY WILL WALK AND
NOT BE FAINT.
-ISAIAH 40:21-23, 25, 26, 28-31
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The Story of Todd Beamer
Lets Roll
"JESUS HELP ME"
The Faith of Todd Beamer
"I don't think we're going to get out of this thing. I'm going to have
to go out on faith." It was the voice of Todd Beamer, the passenger ... and Wheaton College graduate ... who said, "Let's
roll" as he led the charge against the terrorists who had hijacked United Flight 93, the one, you will remember, that crashed
in the Pennsylvania countryside. The whole world knows how brave Beamer and his fellow passengers were on September 11th.
But this week we learned more fully what buttressed that bravery: Faith in Jesus Christ. Todd died as he lived . a faithful
evangelical believer. In an article titled "The Real Story of Flight 93,"
Newsweek reveals gripping new details from the
actual transcripts of the now-recovered cockpit voice recorder. "Todd had been afraid," Newsweek relates.
"More than once, he cried out for his Savior." After passengers were herded to the back of the
jet, Beamer called the GTE Customer Center in Oakbrook, Illinois . He told supervisor Lisa Jefferson about the hijacking.
The passengers were planning to jump the terrorists, he said. And then he asked her to pray with him. As Newsweek relates
."Beamer kept a Lord's Prayer bookmark in his Tom Clancy novel, but he didn't need any prompting. He began to recite the ancient
litany, and Jefferson joined him: Our Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be Thy name." As they finished, Beamer added,
"Jesus, help me." And then, Beamer and his fellow passengers
prayed a prayer that has comforted millions
down through
the centuries . the prayer that David wrote in a time of great anguish:
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want ...Yea,
though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. And then the famous last words: "Are you guys
ready? Let's roll." We now know from the cockpit voice recorder that Beamer and other passengers wrestled with the hijackers
and forced the plane to crash into the ground, killing themselves but foiling what was believed to have been the hijackers'
plan to fly Flight 93 into the Capitol or the White House.
As Christians, we know that God can bring good out of evil.
In Todd Beamer, the world witnesses a faith that held up in the extremity of fear. A faith that is even now comforting his
widow and two young sons.
Lisa Beamer told NBC's Dateline, "You know, in the Lord's Prayer, it asks us to forgive our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us." "As Todd prayed this prayer in the last moments of his life, in a way," Lisa
said, "He was forgiving those people for what they were doing, the most horrible thing you could ever do to someone." It wasn't
Todd Beamer's job to fight terrorists. He was just a passenger, who along with several others, did what he didn't have to
do but foiled a terrible evil that might have been done to his country.
As Flight 93 hurtled towards destruction,
Todd
Beamer could not have known that his quiet prayers would ultimately be heard by millions .. that the story of his last acts
on earth would be a witness to the Lord he loved and served and a lasting example of true heroism.
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