". . . feeling the fragility of life . . ."

Those were the words someone used today to describe her feelings after 9/11. She lived in Manhattan at the time and her family lived in the surrounding area. They had good reason to feel the fragility of life. I felt it too, all the way in Alabama.

Life is fragile.

Al Marchand was a flight attendant on United Airline Flight 175 when it flew into the World Trade Center south tower on September 11, 2001. Four years earlier he was a policeman and bartender. One night after the bar he worked at closed, someone on the cleaning crew led him to receive Jesus as his Savior. His wife Rebecca also came to know the Lord and told about how Al was a changed man after he believed. He had a passion for sharing his new found faith with others. Al retired from the police force and became a flight attendant thinking the airplane would be a place he could share Jesus. He said to his wife, "What if there is a time when a flight is going down?  What if I am the only one who can share the gospel?" 

A month before his death, he shared that same vision with a passenger. He told her, "I became a flight attendant so if a plane went down I could have 30-40 seconds to speak the gospel to people so they could receive Christ." Those who knew him are confident that Al shared the gospel with the passengers on the plane that day. God had put that in Al's heart.

Al Marchand's earthly life was fragile but his confidence and passion came from a different place. He had a living faith relationship with Jesus Christ. No terrorist, no storm, no disease can take that away. Oh, I hope you know Jesus! He loves you so much that He died for you. You can trust Him when all else fails. And it will.

If you do know Him, I hope you are inspired like I was by Al Marchand's story. May we not hover in a corner like those with no hope. He has called us, gifted us, and empowered us. What has He put in your heart?  

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, 

(Ephesians 1:17-20)