9/11

I was in my office on what I believe was a Tuesday morning. I was to have lunch later that day with the chairwoman of our church's Board of Trustees. She called around 9:00 a.m., saying she would not be able to make it for lunch. She worked in a Federal building, she said, and they were under a security lock down because an aircraft of some kind had hit the twin towers in New York, and it was possible that it had been a deliberate attack.

Within an hour I was racing home, listening to the radio, trying to get to a television screen. I lived in the Kansas City area at the time. I watched an airliner from Kansas City International Airport literally turn around in the sky, called back to KCI. On my way home, the second tower was hit. As I watched in horror at home, the Pentagon received its blow. My daughter called. She was student teaching at the time. "What do I say to these kids?" she asked, tearfully. I didn't really know how to respond. "This is your generation's Pearl Harbor," I said, weakly.

We all remember where we were when the world changed forever.

A couple of nights ago my wife and I watched the movie portrayal of the plane that was supposed to hit the capital - "United 93." It's a presumption of what it might have been like aboard that plane, but it was pretty well done. They portrayed the passengers as reluctant heroes, but courageous none the less, trying to retake the plane or at least abort the hijackers' murderous mission. And they portrayed the hijackers as violent and bent on destruction, but themselves victims in a way - driven to some kind of destructive madness by their sense of injustice and a cruel image of their understanding of God; in the end, fearful themselves, and crying out desperately for the ear of God - the same God to whom many of the passengers prayed their last prayer and commended their spirits.

It was a horrible, cruel, destructive day. And for a brief moment people realized how vulnerable we really are, how close hate and death can really be to us, and how we really do not just battle against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities that chew up and spit out human beings like a machine. And for a while, we turned to God because we felt there was nowhere else to turn. But then we gradually went back to business as usual. September 11, 2002 came and went, then 2003, and on to 2008. And the brief surge in worship attendance settled back to its low level.

Do we have to be on a plane plummeting toward a field in Pennsylvania to throw our lives fully and completely into the arms of a merciful, powerful God? Okay, I'm rambling, and no point is really made here. I'm just remembering. And I'm going to fly a flag at half staff tomorrow, and pause for prayer mid-morning. I invite you to do the same. Let's pause on the river for a moment.