“It will never be the same,” said a Boston athletic association representative in the dawn following yesterday’s tragedy.

He might well have been talking about all of us because those are the words a nation grieved with after innocent lives were lost on 9/11. 

“It will never be the same” is that sickening punch to the gut each time our freedom and security are attacked in broad daylight and when we might least expect it.

Young Martin Richards was just eight years old welcoming his father across the finish line even as God welcomed this young soul home at the hands of unspeakable evil.

Yesterday was not only the running of the iconic 26-mile marathon, it was also “Patriot’s Day” in the city that fathered the Sons of Liberty, Paul Revere and the Mechanics, the Boston Tea Party — the birth of a free nation.

Our hearts are heavy as a nation. This tragic act of terror is the work of coward(s). We must remember that.

And in the face of events that shatter our security, we must remember we are America: Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

Though the violence of evil may seek to extinguish it, America’s light is not of fear, but of faith and of freedom and — Godspeed — will continue to shine in a dark world in the same way God’s hand renews from dark the dawn each day.