Jesus saves!

There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. Proverbs 18:24

Tim Kimmel, who along with his wife, Darcy, is a frequent speaker at our Weekend to Remember marriage conferences, remembers the two of them going out to eat sometime around his fortieth birthday. As they were waiting for their meal to arrive, he began doodling a crude picture of a casket on his paper napkin.

Turning it around to face his wife, he asked, "Darcy, how many people does it take to carry one of these things?"

"I don't know," she answered. "Six. Or eight."

"Okay, if I were to die tonight," he asked, "who would you call to be my pallbearers?" She began giving him a name or two, followed by the names of his brothers.

"No, not my brothers. They don't count. They'd be required to be there anyway. I want you to think of people who wouldn't feel like they had to come but who would drop whatever they were doing if you called them." Unfortunately, those names didn't fire so quickly to mind. And that's when Tim realized that he couldn't be sure he had enough real friends to answer his roll call for casket carriers.

That bothered him. He realized that, like so many other men, he had not really worked on building friendships. And that bothered him.

Since that night, Tim has been spending time with men, pouring his life into them. He is choosing to invest himself in people rather than fritter his time away on trivial, temporary matters.

You have a lot of choices in front of you—all kinds of ways you could spend your time and energy in the remaining years of your life. Will you use them to draw you closer to others or more deeply within yourself?

Turning Tragedy into Triumph
By Os Hillman

September 11

"So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you" (2 Cor 4:12).

On 9/11/01, New York City firefighter Stephen Siller had just completed his shift when he heard on his truck's scanner that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. Siller quickly turned his truck around and attempted to drive back to Manhattan via the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel but found the entrance blocked by abandoned vehicles. Desperate to join his elite Squad One brothers, Siller donned 75 pounds of fire gear and ran a mile-and-a-half through the tunnel, before an emergency vehicle picked him up and dropped him off at Tower Two.

Siller had been orphaned at the age of 10 and raised by his much older brothers and sisters. Siller died that day trying to save others. He left behind a wife and five children.

His story proved so inspirational that it became a legend in the newsrooms and firehouses of New York City. His six siblings - who in many ways viewed Siller as a son, as well as a brother - found themselves grappling with a dilemma: should they allow the tragic circumstances of their brother's death to paralyze and embitter them or use it as a catalyst to help others and preserve his memory?

The Siller family chose the latter.

Once they made that decision, and armed with no extraordinary wealth or political clout, the siblings combined forces to convince New York officials to close down the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel the last Sunday morning of each September and stage the "Tunnel to Towers Run" to commemorate their brother's heroic last run.

Each year since 9/11 tens of thousands of runners have retraced the steps of a hero. As part of the event 343 New York City firefighters, each representing a fallen comrade and holding an American flag, stand throughout the length of the tunnel. They are joined by firefighters from across the United States, each holding a poster-size picture of a firefighter who perished on 9/11.

The Siller family has raised more than $1 million and donated the money to charities that benefit families of those affected by the 9/11 attacks.

This is a tribute to one heartbroken family who opted to channel its energy into triumph out of tragedy.