09/11/2026
A word from our Executive Director on the 25th anniversary of 9/11…
It’s hard to believe it’s been 25 years.
I vividly remember that morning.
Three time zones away from the tragic events that morning, I received a call from a friend while I was getting ready for my day of teaching high school American history and government.
“Turn on the TV” was all she said.
Like all of us who remember that day, I was glued to the coverage.
I skipped my usual shower and shave…normal routines felt somehow inappropriate as people were violently losing their lives 3,000 miles away.
Time demanded that I finally had to get in the car and drive to school, uncertain about what I would say to my students.
Obviously my lesson plans were non-starters.
I turned on the news coverage in my classroom.
Later in the day the district sent an email directive to turn it off.
I essentially ignored it, realizing it was a wise policy for younger students, but my 16 and 17-year-old students needed to see this.
Despite the shock, they needed to have this common experience as young American citizens.
Of course that first day, we technically didn’t know who was responsible.
But I knew.
I was already well-versed in radical Islamic terror.
I knew about the previous attempt to bomb the World Trade Center, and the embassy bombings in Africa.
So I did my best to explain radical Islamic terrorism to my students.
It was a risk…I could have been wrong about who was responsible.
A lot of questions ran through my mind that day. At 30 years old, was I too old to join the military? What was my obligation? What would this day require of me?
I prayed…a lot.
Ultimately, it seemed better to stay right where I was, providing for my wife and two baby daughters, teaching my public school students to love this country, understand the nature of good and evil, and appreciate that freedom comes at a cost.
Did I take the easy way out? In a sense, yes.
I will forever honor heroes like Pat Tillman, who abandoned a lucrative NFL career, became an Army Ranger, and lost his life in Afghanistan.
Lord, thank you for the many who have sacrificed so much to protect us, and enabled me to raise my children and teach high school students from the relative safety of my classroom.
I am forever in their debt.
After everything that followed that bright September morning—the unity, the resolve, the cost—it is harder still to watch what we have since squandered.
Despite the efforts of so many of us, we have raised a generation that often regards our national experiment with suspicion rather than gratitude.
Is it possible a sizable portion of the country now believes America somehow deserved 9/11?
Sadly, we have lost the metanarrative.
As a culture we no longer understand that all nations, particularly powerful ones, have shameful chapters in their histories.
Nations do ugly things because they are led by fallen people.
People like us.
Our Bibles tell us this is true.
We have failed to pass on the essential truth: American greatness is found in the exceptions—the times a powerful nation restrained itself, corrected itself, or spent blood and treasure for something larger than itself.
Our youngest generations have lost the reality of the pre-1776 world, where natural rights, the rule of law, and freedom of conscience were rare and fragile.
So where do we go from here?
We don’t give up.
We keep praying…fervently.
We keep showing up in our families, churches, schools and neighborhoods.
We trust God with the harvest.
At least twice in our history, God has brought Great Awakenings to revive and unite a divided and distracted nation.
Will He do it again?
I don’t know.
But I do know that His plan—whether or not it includes renewal in our great nation—is better than anything we can build on our own.
On this solemn anniversary, let’s keep our eyes on Him.
Blessings,
David Schmus
