By MONROE ROARK
mroark@thecitizennews.com

Workers continue to sift through the rubble in New York's financial district. The images haunt us from nearly every media outlet newspapers, radio, television, all of it.

Virtually everyone you meet knows somebody who knows somebody who was there, or lives nearby, or had been at the World Trade Center the day before. It has been many years since a single event touched everyone like that.

Now you can't drive 100 yards down any street without seeing an American flag. People of every religious faith and political persuasion are banding together in a conflict that, as President Bush so eloquently pointed out, has only two sides, with no room for neutrality.

And there is already speculation as to how this will affect American life in the months and years to come. How long will the flags fly? How long will we talk continually about how we should strike back?

Volumes have been said about how this has "united" the American people. But there may be a bit more to it than that.

A large portion of this country's population, especially the younger generations such as my own (I'm 34), has found, for the first time in their lives, something to believe in. Something that might actually be bigger than themselves. A cause.

After being deluged by moral relativism from every direction on college campuses, in the workplace, through the entertainment industry, and in the mainstream media, to name a few examples some people are realizing that things can actually be measured in black and white. Right and wrong.

Millions of folks will never look at their families the same way again. I suspect that many of those who narrowly survived the attacks will find the time for their loved ones in the next few months, and especially around the holidays, where they might not have done so in the past. For the victims' families, those special times will resonate in a tragically different way, but family ties will be emphasized as well.

And as we reevaluate what is really important in life, perhaps a few lonely souls who never before considered the possibility of anything resembling God in their lives will decide that, in times like these, believing that He is in control is the only thing that will keep you from losing your mind in a world filled with such evil.

It's impossible to predict what will happen down the road. But there's a tremendous opportunity to see emerge from this struggle a generation of better Americans, with more devotion that ever to their faith, their spouses, their children and their country. What a message that would send to those who committed this despicable act and would dare think of doing so again.

[Monroe Roark can be reached at mroark@TheCitizenNews.com.]

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