IT'S ALL ABOUT THE DAY BEFORE

“It’s All About The Day Before”

            Some things are impossible to forget.  We all remember Sept 11, 2001 when hijacked planes brought down the Twin Towers in New York and struck the Pentagon in Washington D.C.  Another, United Flight 93, might have done even more damage if not for the heroic action of Todd Beamer and others who were on that flight.

            About five years later I heard David Beamer, Todd’s father, speak at the Emmanuel Christian Seminary banquet here in Eugene.  He spoke of how his son had “made it with man” as a highly successful software salesman.  On the day before 9/11 Todd and his wife were in Rome, ending a vacation he had won through his sales.

            They returned to Boston and he boarded Flight 93 to San Francisco, early on September 11.  After business in SF he planned to fly back to Boston that night, but as we know, he and all other passengers on the hijacked plane died that day.  We know his last words because he made contact by telephone with an operator, named Lisa.  Todd gave her a message for his wife, also named Lisa, said the Lord’s Prayer, and then was heard to say to others around him, “Are you ready?  Let’s roll.”  These were the last words that we heard him speak.

            On September 11, his father said, Todd died a Christian.  As he put it, “Todd had it made” with God as well as with man.  Then his father added this puzzling sentence: “It’s all about the day before.”  What did he mean, it’s all about the day before?  “You see,” he explained, “Todd had it made with God the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that .....” 

            It’s all about the day before.  We cannot wait until the crisis comes to establish our relationship with God and be ready for whatever comes.  Long before Todd Beamer and others like him, Jesus demonstrated this readiness, and this relationship, to an even greater degree.  His last words to his disciples, recorded in John 16:32-33, say it all:

The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered ... and you will leave me alone.  Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me.  I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace.  In the world you face persecution.  But take courage; I have conquered the world.

            He was not alone as he went to the cross; the Father was with him.  He could say, therefore, even as he faced death on the cross, “I have conquered the world.”  Jesus was ready when the crisis came because he was ready on the day before, and the day before that, and his resurrection proved that he had indeed, “conquered the world.”

            There is no better place for us to renew our relationship with God the Father and with Christ our Savior and be ready for whatever crisis may come than at the Table of the Lord.  Here we renew our covenant with him, receive the forgiveness of our sins, and refresh our faith.  Here we are one with him who conquered the world.