On September 12.

Since September 11, 2001, I’ve often wondered what might have happened had her appointment been a day earlier or the terrorist attacks a day later. I could have been walking the streets of New York City with her picture.

What were your feelings that tragic day? Shock? Fear? Anger? Confusion? Sadness? How do you process those feelings now, as reminders of the attacks come in anniversary commemorations and media coverage? Nearly two-thirds of American Red Cross 9/11 adult counselees still grieve, according to a study of those directly affected by the attacks{1}.

“I Hate You!”

In the immediate aftermath, my feelings of sadness blended with intense hostility. Once when Osama Bin Laden’s face appeared on television, I spontaneously shouted, “I hate you!”

I was and am a follower of Jesus. He taught his followers to “love your enemies.”{2} Why was I yelling “I hate you!” to a picture on a TV screen?

I wondered why this guy hated my sister. If Deborah Wright had been among the victims, her death would have been included among those he applauded. If I had been a victim, he would have applauded mine. I wrote a radio series on “Why Radical Muslims Hate You” to discover historical, socio-cultural, political, religious, and psychological roots of such anger. It helped me to connect with Muslims who shared similar concerns but disavowed the radical methods.

Dust of Death

Deborah’s experience as a corporate chaplain took her back to New York to help WTC-based companies and their employees who suffered loss on 9/11 cope with the emotional and spiritual whirlwinds their worlds had become. Many suffered from survivor guilt. Failure to process grief could lead to serious consequences. Some firemen, for instance, were assigned to look after widows of fallen comrades. “There can be enormous intimacy and bonding in shared grief,” Deborah notes. “Some of the firemen and widows ended up in bed together.”

Some competitive, driven businesspersons re-examined their rat race—making big bucks and accumulating the most toys—and asked, “Is that all there is?”. Long looks at corporate culture prompted many to consider spiritual realities.

Part of helping survivors process their experiences involved taking them to Ground Zero. Deborah comments, “As I stood at Ground Zero and picked up the dust, I could not help but think that we were standing in a giant crematorium. The ground seemed hallowed to me.”

Personal Lessons from 9/11

What personal 9/11 lessons persist? Perhaps you can relate to these that seem poignant to me:

We live in a contingent universe. Human decisions and actions have consequences, often for good or evil.

Life is temporary. One early spiritual leader wrote of our lives’ fleeting nature, “You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.”{3}

Link with the eternal. Jesus of Nazareth, whom people of diverse spiritual persuasions respect as a great teacher, told a friend grieving her brother’s death, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die like everyone else, will live again. They are given eternal life for believing in me and will never perish.”{4}

Cherish your friends. In the aftermath of 9/11, many friendships were deepened as people linked with each other for encouragement, solace and support.

Understand and love your enemies and intellectual adversaries. Support national defense, but learning about state enemies can help communication with moderates who share some of their convictions. Getting to know neighbors or associates with whom you differ politically, philosophically or spiritually can help build bridges that foster civility in public discourse.

Related reading: Lorraine tells the story of her son, a NYPD officer at Ground Zero on 9/11, and how she began her own search for meaning. Hear Lorraine ’s story.

Notes
1. Amy Westfeldt, “Study: Sept. 11 Survivors Still Grieving,” Associated Press, May 26, 2006, on AOL News. Also see full Red Cross report, http://www.redcross.org/images/pdfs/SRPClientSurvey.pdf, p. v.
2. Matthew 5:44 NASB.
3. James 4:14 NASB.
4. John 11:25 NLT.

© 2006 Rusty Wright, used by permission.

Image credit: Joseph Hoetzl, used with permission, Creative Commons 2.0 License.

On September 11, 2001 I said my first prayer. My son was a police officer with the New York Police Department. As I sat watching the Twin Towers burn, at first I thought that he was fine since he worked a desk job at One Police Plaza. But what if he went over to help?

“Please God,” I said, “if you’re listening… don’t let them go in there. You can take my car, my house, take anything you want, but don’t let them go in that building. He doesn’t even have a baby yet, God!”

Finally, I was able to reach his wife, Geraldine, who told me that a bunch of people from One Police Plaza went over to help. I hung up and turned back to the TV just in time to see the first tower fall. I thought the worst, of course.

It wasn’t until about 8:30 that evening that I heard from the police department that he was on his way home.

But that almost wasn’t the case.

My son was heading into the World Trade Center when his lieutenant said, “We need more equipment before we go in there.” They turned away from the others and went back to their van. They were spared! And nine months later he and his wife had a beautiful baby girl. Our miracle child!

I got my miracle, now what?

I believed there was a God and he answered my prayer on September 11, but what to do? The most logical thing was to go to church, so off I went. But people there seemed to be just going through the motions, like they felt they had to be there. I went less and less.

One day, I received the news that my estranged husband had died. He had written me once in a while from Arizona and let me know that he was “saved” (whatever that meant) and that he was praying for me and the kids. My inheritance was a Bible full of Arizona sand. I thought I may as well read it and give church another try. Still, not much changed. Something was missing and I couldn’t figure out what it was.

Channel surfing

Then one day I was watching a history show on TV. It was about the history of execution and towards the end, the narrator said, “Now for the most famous execution of all…” I had no idea what that could be. Well, I found out it was Jesus of Nazareth. Watching this segment, I was overcome by an awful feeling of guilt. The other stories didn’t bother me, why his? Listening to the account of Jesus’ death, I found myself asking, Why did he have to do that?”

Suddenly, I realized for the first time that Jesus was God! No wonder people talked about him. I knew from that day on things were going to be different.. I owed him big time. But what now…? Where do I go?

Watching the Passion

A few weeks later the Passion of the Christ movie came out and I went five times! I was fascinated by it and what Jesus had done. I needed some more info, so I hit the internet and just happened to come across this wonderful web site, Thelife.com. I checked out different articles and finally saw a button that said, “Discuss Jesus” That was my first introduction to a chat room.

Here were the people that I had been looking for, people excited about their relationship with God and not afraid to answer my questions. After about four months they were talking about how we could know for sure that we were going to go to heaven when we died. I asked, “How?” Right there in chat they explained that it was simply by inviting Jesus into my life… so I did it right there and then.

Rosie, one of the people in the chat room who was like a mentor to me, just happened to have a friend that was the pastor of a church that she thought, would have just what I needed. And it was.

I’m learning to forgive others and myself. I’m learning to be thankful and I’m learning what true happiness is. Best of all, I’m getting to know and love the Person who heard and answered my first prayer on that fiery September 11 five years ago.

A lot has changed since 9/11. Not the least of all me.

Take a look at your life. How would you describe it? Contented? Rushed? Exciting? Stressful? Moving forward? Holding back? For many of us it’s all of the above at times. There are things we dream of doing one day, there are things we wish we could forget. In the Bible, it says that Jesus came to make all things new. What would your life look like if you could start over with a clean slate?

Living with hope

If you are looking for peace, there is a way to balance your life. No one can be perfect, or have a perfect life. But every one of us has the opportunity to experience perfect grace through a personal relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ.

You can receive Christ right now by faith through prayer. Praying is simply talking to God. God knows your heart and is not so concerned with your words as He is with the attitude of your heart. Here’s a suggested prayer:

Lord Jesus, I want to know you personally. Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life to you and ask you to come in as my Savior and Lord. Take control of my life. Thank you for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Make me the kind of person you want me to be.

Does this prayer express the desire of your heart? You can pray it right now, and Jesus Christ will come into your life, just as He promised.

Is this the life for you?
If you invited Christ into your life, thank God often that He is in your life, that He will never leave you and that you have eternal life. As you learn more about your relationship with God, and how much He loves you, you’ll experience life to the fullest.

We’ve seen the photographs of smoke and rubble where the World Trade Center used to stand.

Why do people get cancer? Why are there earthquakes that destroy entire cities? Why do people have to work so hard just to have enough money to barely feed their families? Subconsciously, we probably ask ourselves questions like these quite often. But consciously we rarely do. We’re so busy living our lives we rarely stop and wonder WHY?

But then something happens to wake us up. Our parents get divorced. The girl down the street gets abducted. A relative gets cancer. That wakes us up for awhile. But then we can often sink back into the denial. That is, until another tragedy hits, another incongruency. Then we’re likely to think, “Something isn’t right here. Something is really, really wrong. This isn’t how life’s supposed to be!”

So, WHY do bad things happen? WHY isn’t this world a better place?

There is an answer to the WHY question, found in the Bible. But it’s not an answer that most people like to hear: the world is the way it is because it’s the world that we, in a sense, have asked for.

Sound strange?

What or who could make this world different than the way it is? What or who could guarantee that life is pain-free, for everyone, all the time?

God could. God could accomplish that. But he doesn’t. At least not right now. And we’re angry with him as a result. We say, “God can’t be all-powerful and all-loving. If he were, this world wouldn’t be the way it is!”

We say this hoping that God will then change his position on the matter. Our hope is that putting a guilt trip on him will make him change the way he’s doing things. But he doesn’t seem to budge. WHY doesn’t he?

God doesn’t budge–he doesn’t change things right now–because he’s giving us what we asked for: a world where he is absent and unnecessary.

Remember the story of Adam and Eve? They ate the “forbidden fruit.” That fruit was the idea that there’s something more important in life than God himself. For Adam and Eve, this entailed the hope that they could become like God, without God.

They consumed the notion that there was something more valuable in existence than God himself, something more valuable than having a personal relationship with God. And their story is the story of all of us, isn’t it? Who hasn’t said–if not audibly at least in their hearts — “God, I think I can do this without you. I’ll just go this one alone. But thanks for the offer”.

We’ve all tried to make life work without God. Why do we do that? Probably because we’ve all bought the notion that there’s something more valuable, more important, than God. For different people it’s different things, but the mindset is the same: “God isn’t what’s most important in life. In fact, I’d just as soon do it without him altogether.”

What is God’s response to that?

Maybe the only world that God really wants is one in which everyone there realizes that he is life’s most valuable commodity. The Bible says that God is a jealous God. Quite possibly, God wants to be part of a system in which he is wanted more than anything else. He is, after all, God, the Creator. The One who has always existed. The One who can create a universe “on the backstroke.”

Maybe God has this funny idea that we should value him above all persons and all things and even above ourselves.

Then, because we don’t, maybe he steps out of the picture, to an extent. Maybe he says, in effect, “Okay, you don’t want me around, so I’m out of here. But your world will not be the same without me.”

Maybe that explains the world we live in–a system that isn’t God’s intention, a system without God. In the Bible, God told Adam and Eve what such a system would look like: “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. …By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3.17, 19)

The system of this world

Life is painful. Life is difficult. Horrible things happen to people all the time. We have to work to survive. Rather than working for pleasure, we work out of necessity, in order to feed ourselves and our families. We die. Whether it’s at 7, 17, 67 or 100, we all die. No one escapes death.

So that’s the system we live in: pain, having to work to survive, then death. So what’s the big deal? Why is that kind of a world such a problem?

That kind of a world is a problem because we can imagine a much better world. The Bible says that God has “set eternity in the hearts of men” (Ecclesiastes 3.11). We know, in our hearts, what a better world would look like.

If we were merely products of random chance plus time, then we wouldn’t conceive of a better world –”You work hard. You endure pain. Then you die. That’s life.” But we don’t say that in our minds. Because we know better. We know that a world free of death, pain, and survival-labor is actually possible. (That’s why we ridicule God for not providing that better world right now.)

But God has left us in this world. Why? Maybe so that we would see the need for him. Maybe he’s put us in this world, in this system, to show us what a world is like without him at the helm. Pretty awful.

But many of us try to make the system work in spite of its flaws. We tough it out. We work hard. We endure the pain. Then we face death courageously or with indifference–even though it’s the great calling card that lets us know there’s something very wrong with this world.

Or we do our best to overlook the flaws altogether. We expend all of our energy having as much “fun” as possible, and we pretend the flaws aren’t there.

So, then, what is this life all about? WHY are we here?

From all that the Bible says, it seems that God simply wants people who want him. It’s not complicated at all. He wants to know people and have them reside in his system. Here’s a sampling of the evidence for this…

“[God] wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” (1Timothy 2.4)

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3.16)

“The Lord…is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2Peter 3.9)

“For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!” (Ezekiel 18.32)

“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.” (John 11.25)

Maybe God gives us time in this world system to make a very important decision about him: will we want to have a relationship with him or not? That’s likely why we’re here.

If we begin a relationship with him now, he will greatly improve our time in this world. Life may not be necessarily easier, but it will definitely be more fulfilling, rewarding and purposeful.

However, God has a completely different system in mind altogether–one he’s fully in charge of, one in which his will is done all the time. Afterall, who sees every rape, every car accident, every hungry person, every cancer victim, every abandoned child? It’s God who sees all of this and more, all of the time. Quite possibly, he is much more upset about the condition of this world than we are, or ever could be. Maybe we couldn’t handle the amount of pain that God himself constantly endures. And yet he allows this world to go on–but only for a time.

There are no easy answers to the WHY question. But it’s likely that the problems in this life and in this world should drive us to God and show us the need for him. Maybe that’s why Jesus advised us to pray the following to God: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6.10). This world isn’t the way God wants it to be. And it won’t be until his kingdom comes.

Article courtesy of Every Student’s Choice