I remember where I was the day the world stopped turning. I was a freshman at James Madison University, and school had started just a few weeks earlier. I've always been a morning person, and in typical fashion I was up early that morning. I was talking to a friend on instant messenger and watching the morning news. Shortly before 9 AM, breaking news reported that a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center Buildings. I messaged my friend to turn on the news. News reporters were still trying to make heads or tails of what had happened when the second plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Within the span of a little more than an hour and a half, both towers had fallen.
As hard as it was to fathom, by the end of the day, two more terrorist attacks had unfolded. A total of 2,977 people lost their lives to senseless and unspeakable violence on that day: 246 on the four planes that went down, 2,606 in the World Trade Center and surrounding area, and 125 at the Pentagon. Among those who died at the World Trade Center, 411 were emergency workers who responded to the tragedy.
I remember the chaos and panic that surrounded us that day. So many people on campus and around the country were desperately trying to locate loved ones that terrible day. It is on days like September 11th when we wonder, "Where was God? Why would God let this happen?"
I don't have an answer for the second question, "Why would God let this happen?" I came across this article titled "Where is God in Tragedy" a few weeks ago that perhaps offers some insight. The author, an atheist-turned-Christian, says this a little ways into the article, "I believe one answer is because God insists we become like Him. God abhors evil, and God cares about others. The Bible says God is "grieved" by sin and evil. Thus, I believe the marvel of the mystery of the problem of evil is that it tacitly and subtly points us to God's plan to confirm us to the likeness of His Son." She goes on to say a few paragraphs later, "Pain is the soil where the deepest kind of faith in God grows. Pain is the context for maturing our love for God, so we can love God foremost. As offensive as that seems from the vantage point of fear, it squares with the logic of faith." I don't know if that is the answer. I think faith is believing in spite of not having the answers. Many people say, "When you get to Heaven you can ask." Personally, I think the answers will matter even less once I'm in Heaven. There is no pain and no tears in Heaven, so I can't imagine that I'll be spending my time there reflecting on the horrible tragedies of this Earth.
The answer to the first question, "Where was God?", is more obvious to me. God was there in the helpers. There is a quote from Mr. Rogers, "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping." That couldn't have been truer following 9/11. Thousands of police officers, EMT's, firefighters, civil servants, and volunteers rushed to Ground Zero in the minutes, hours, days, weeks, and months following the attack. They did so without regard to their own safety and health. God was also visible in the numerous symbols of faith that came out of the 9/11 rubble: the Ground Zero Cross, St. Paul's Church (known as the little Chapel that stood), and the Ground Zero Bible. I believe if you look for God in the middle of and in the aftermath of tragedy, you will always find Him. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted." Matthew 5:4
Ground Zero is a term that identifies the point on the earth's surface directly above or below an exploding nuclear bomb, and it has become synonymous with 9/11. But the term has another meaning too - it can mean "a starting point" or "a center of rapid development or change". Tragedy does a lot of things to us, but one thing it most certainly does is leave us wondering, "Now what?" It changes us. We emerge from the rubble stronger, and hopefully better, versions of ourselves. And we never, ever forget.
Love,
Mommy
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