Among my friends, the same topic comes up every year around this time. The friends who are teachers bring it up the most: Can you believe how many kids know nothing about 9/11? My students weren’t even born when it happened.

My husband’s grandma says the same thing about D-Day. She mourns the fact that many in our country don’t even remember what date it was. Same thing with Pearl Harbor. So many tragic, life-robbing days in our country’s history quickly become distant memory.

The United States has, for the most part, moved on since 9/11. What happened on that horrific day doesn’t carry the same weight and emotional pain for most of us as it did 18 years ago unless we lost someone close to us.

We can view that fact as a sign of historical indifference or ignorance, but maybe there’s a positive way to view it. Maybe we can be thankful that the Great Restorer has brought healing to our nation. We can be thankful that God came beside our country in those dark days and helped us band together to initiate repair and to fight back against the pain. We can be thankful that many of our country’s children have never experienced a terrorist attack with the magnitude of 9/11. Most of all, we can be thankful that God is a good God in good times and in bad: “Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love” (Lamentations 3:32).