I've often pondered the gift of imagination. Is there a boundary that we cannot cross with our imaginations? Is there a future that we cannot imagine with this wonderful gift? And the opposite unfortunately is also true, is there a limit to the darkness that we can explore and unleash using this powerful tool that God has gifted to each one of us?
I believe that we are most like our Creator when we are creative. The Bible says that God imagined the entire universe and then it came to pass. His thoughts became our reality. And we have all been imprinted with that same seal of creativity, to be used for good or evil, in powerful ways that can influence people and alter history.
The reason you have this gift is because God imagines. And God gave you the ability to create with your imagination. When you use your imagination for good and for God, God smiles.
Three days after the horrific attack on the World Trade Center Towers, President Bush visited the site to speak to the first responders, troops, and citizens of our country. It was a perilous time in our nation's history, no one was sure who had attacked the United States, and no one knew if there were more attacks coming. All domestic and international flights were still cancelled, the military was on high alert, and our entire nation was on edge.
President Bush had already addressed the nation from the Barksdale Air Force Base on 9/11 as well as from the Oval Office later that same evening, but this time, standing on the heap of debri that was the World Trade Center Towers, he seemed to connect directly with the people in a way that his previous speeches had failed to accomplish. Standing on a pile of rubble, arm around one of New York City's finest, he started speaking to the crowd through a bullhorn. It quickly became apparent that the volume of the bullhorn was not loud enough for everyone to hear but that is where President Bush seized the moment to utter his timeless words that comforted, and rallied the nation. In my opinion, this is one of the top five speeches given by anyone in my lifetime.
We can disagree about the merits of President Bush's policies and even his response to the 9/11 attacks, but I think we can all agree that on that day, September 14th, he communicated with the people of our country in a way that few modern leaders have ever done, assuring the citizens of the United States that their voices were being heard and that soon, the world would also hear from them.
A question that historians have wrestled with for decades is this: "Would Germany and the Axis powers have won World War II without the intervention of the United States?"
No less an authority than England's prime minister at that time, Winston Churchill, expressed his belief after the attack on Pearl Harbor. "After the United States entered the war I never slept as soundly as the night following Pearl Harbor. For I knew that The American Race would now be entering the war and it would never be the same.”
Churchill knew that Germany was going to declare war on the United States in support of the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor. He also knew that Germany had no means of defeating either Great Britain or the United States in an all-out war and that Japan joining the Axis alliance was not going to change that imbalance of resources.
Neither Adolf Hitler nor Hideki Tojo had the education or imagination to understand that, once the United States took sides in a conflict, it could not be stopped by any major power that controlled less resources then America could provide. And that the Americans, as they showed in their own civil war, were utterly relentless when they were angry enough to commit all their strength.
