"JESUS HELP ME"
The Faith of Todd
Beamer
"I don't think we're going
to get out of this
thing.
I'm going to have to go out
on faith."
It was the voice of
Todd Beamer, the passenger
... and
Wheaton College graduate ... who
said,
"Let's roll" as he led the charge against
the
terrorists who hadhijacked
United Flight 93,
the one, you will remember, that crashed
in
the
Pennsylvania
countryside.
The whole world knows
how brave Beamer
and his fellow passengers were on September
11th.
But this week we learned more fully what
buttressed
that bravery: Faith in Jesus
Christ.
Todd died as he lived, a faithful evangelical
believer.
In an article titled
"The Real Story of Flight 93,"
Newsweek reveals gripping new
details from the
actual transcripts of the
now-recovered cockpit
voice recorder. "Todd had been
afraid,"
Newsweek
relates.
"More than once, he cried out for his
Savior."
After passengers were herded to the back of
the
jet, Beamer called the
GTE Customer Center
in
Oakbrook,
Illinois . He told supervisor
Lisa
Jefferson about the hijacking. The
passengers
were planning to jump the terrorists, he
said.
And then he asked her to pray with
him.
As Newsweek relates .
"Beamer kept a Lord's Prayer
bookmark in his
Tom Clancy novel, but he didn't need
any
prompting. He began to recite the ancient
litany,
and Jefferson joined him:
Our Father which art in
heaven,
Hallowed be Thy
name."
As they finished, Beamer
added,
"Jesus, help
me."
And then, Beamer and his fellow
passengers
prayed a prayer that has
comforted millions
down through the centuries . the
prayer that
David wrote in a time of great
anguish:
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want
.
Yea, though I walk through the
valley
of the shadow of death,
I will fear no
evil.
And then the famous last
words:
"Are you guys ready? Let's
roll."
We now know from the cockpit voice
recorder
that Beamer and other passengers wrestled
with
the hijackers and forced the plane to crash
into
the ground, killing themselves but foiling
what
was believed to have been the hijackers' plan
to
fly Flight 93 into the Capitol or the White
House.
As Christians, we know that God can bring
good
out of evil. In Todd Beamer, the world
witnesses
a faith that held up in the extremity of
fear.
A faith that is even now comforting his
widow
and two young sons.
Lisa Beamer told NBC's
Dateline,
"You know, in the Lord's Prayer, it asks
us
to forgive our trespasses as we forgive those
who
trespass against us." "As Todd prayed this
prayer
in the last moments of his life, in a way," Lisa
said,
"He was forgiving those people for what they
were
doing, the most horrible thing you could ever
do
to someone."
It wasn't Todd Beamer's job to
fight terrorists.
He was just a passenger, who along with
several
others, did what he didn't have to do but foiled
a
terrible evil that might have been done to his
country.
As Flight 93 hurtled towards
destruction,
Todd Beamer could not have known that
his
quiet prayers would ultimately be heard
by
millions .. that the story of his last acts
on
earth would be a witness to the Lord he
loved
and served and a lasting example of true
heroism.
HOPE YOU WILL SHARE
THIS
INSPIRING STORY WITH
YOUR
E-MAIL FRIENDS
