Chances are you didn't wake up yesterday and remember what you were doing five years ago. You didn't relive the events of September 10, 2001, as you went about your day. Chances are, yesterday was just another day. But not today. Today is September 11.

Each morning, my wife leaves the TVs on as she leaves for work and I climb into the shower. Both the bedroom and living room TVs are tuned to Fox News, so I can hear what they are saying no matter where I go in the house as I am getting ready to start my day. Unfortunately, that's usually the only news I get in a day's time. Today on Fox & Friends, they replayed clips of the morning news from five years ago. I started subtracting an hour from the times they were showing and thinking about what I was doing then.

I can remember coming into my classroom that morning and turning on the TV. That was before I was married, but I still watched Fox News before I left for work, and then I usually turned on the TV at school to watch until the first bell. That morning, I watched a normal newscast, and when the first bell rang, they had just said that they believed a small plane had hit the World Trade Center. I turned it off. The next time I turned it on, both towers had been hit, and so had the Pentagon. The rest of the day, I watched as newscasters tried to make sense of the devastation playing out before our eyes.

I can vividly remember everything that happened that day - students who made comments, thing I did after school, and people I talked to that evening. That day was truly one that no one will forget. It was a life-changing day for Americans - both personally and as a country.

Leading up to this fifth anniversary, cable and satellite channels have been full of programming about September 11. From documentaries on the engineering aspects of the towers to made-for-TV movies about flight 93, there have been plenty of opportunities to learn more about the events that led up to that day and the fallout thereafter. And then there's the World Trade Center movie at the theater - a dramatization of the lives of two firemen rescued from the collapsed buildings. The information age has not failed to provide an over-abundance of knowledge about the event. Knowledge is good.

At our MSTA board meeting this past weekend, Executive Director Kent King reminded us that even if prayer does nothing else, it changes the pray-er. Knowledge works in much the same way. It changes the know-er. You see, five years ago, I was fresh out of college, a first-time homeowner, with a year-old blue Mustang convertible. I had been a teacher for four weeks. God had been good to me. I had all of that on September 10, 2001, and I still had it on September 12. The only difference was that gas for my car was almost double what it was two days earlier. I didn't know much about New York; I wasn't very politically savvy; hijacked airplanes were not something that I needed to worry about. That wasn't my problem. But knowledge changes the know-er.

The more I learn about the people involved on September 11, and the more I see how the tragedy impacted lives of real people, the more I understand that they were everyday, ordinary Americans, just doing their jobs. They really did make the ultimate sacrifice - willingly or not - for our freedom.

It seems like this year's news theme is "are we safer now than we were then?" A couple of nights ago, one Fox News viewer emailed a comment that I thought answered the question very well. He said that George W. Bush says we "are" safer, and Harry Reid says we "feel" less safe. They're both right. We are safer because we have captured many of the terrorists and we have increased national security. We feel less safe because we know about the threats now, and we didn't back then. We can never go back to the innocence that existed before that day, when we thought the US was not vulnerable to attack. We always have to be aware.

On my shelf at school, I have a book called September 12th, We Knew Everything Would Be Alright. It was written and illustrated by first-grade students of H. Byron Masterson Elementary in Kennett, Missouri, and published by Scholastic.

"On September 11, 2001, many bad things happened. September 12th was a new day. We knew everything would be alright because... the sun cam up and the birds started singing again. We came to school the same way. We knew everything would be alright when we saw our teacher smiling at the door. We said the pledge like always. We sang the National Anthem very loudly. Our teacher sat and read us lots of good books. We had recess again. We knew everything would be alright because we had homework. 2+2 still added up to 4. Our thought for the day became "America United." We saw lots of flags. Red, white and blue suddenly became everyone's favorite colors. On television we heard our President tell us everything would be alright. On September 12th, our parents still tucked us in our warm, safe beds. Our parents talked to us about the bad things that had happened the day before. We knew we would be alright because our parents said they loved us. We knew everything would be alright because the stars and moon came out and America went to sleep. And the next morning the sun came up again."

Whether or not you agree with our political leaders, they are the ones God has given us. George W. Bush isn't perfect - he makes mistakes. He's human. He has chosen a staff of imperfect humans, and they all make mistakes, too. We would all agree that he has had a harder presidency than many of his predecessors. But how many times do we pray for our president and other leaders? Take time today, and every day, to pray for God's guidance in their lives. Many of them profess to be Christians, and President Bush often seeks guidance from respected pastors and Christian leaders. I believe that if we as Americans will lift up our leaders, God will work through them to bless our country.

The sun will come up tomorrow. When it does, if you feel like everything is alright, whisper a prayer to God * thank Him for freedom . . . thank Him for life . . . and most of all, thank Him for eternity, where we won’t even know the word “terrorism.”