He is Here

The question posed on PBS and several other news services recently, is the question that seems to end all questions about the events that occurred one year ago this week . . .

"Where was God on September 11, 2001?"

My guess is that he was where he always is - hard at work in the human heart and hard at work in the everyday of our lives. Even when those hearts are hardened beyond measure against him, and even when the everyday is anything but "everyday."

I have never shared the first thought I had after hearing that another plane had slammed into the second tower of the World Trade Center, but I shall now. And maybe it was yours as well.

"Oh, my God - there could be hundreds of them up there... we have been caught completely unprepared and we are getting ready to live through a hell that is beyond our imagining..."

And it was hell, and it was beyond our imagining. But as horrifying as it was, it was nowhere nearly as horrendous as it could have been. Not that it isn't still possible for hijackers to pull off a similar act - recent stories of security breakdowns at airports across America are chilling and perhaps even enough to embolden some terrorist somewhere to try it again. But imagine for a moment how easy it was prior to September 11, 2001 to do just what they did - and then imagine if the sick-minded leaders of Al-Qaeda had taken their time and recruited another twenty-five, another fifty, another one-hundred plus men to sacrifice their lives in such a manner. The death and destruction and resulting human suffering could have easily been one thousand fold.

Was God changing hearts somewhere in the days, weeks, months and years prior to September 11, such that the potential for the horrific plans underway were minimized?

I think he was.

And I think he still is.

"But where was God when the towers fell?"

If prior to their collapse you had been asked to predict the fatalities that might result in the collapse of both towers of the World Trade Center into the streets of New York, what would your answer have been? What would it have been if you had known that 50,000 people could be found within them on any given day and another 100,000 could be expected to be within a ten block radius of the buildings? Would it have been anywhere near 2811? Or ten times that?

2811 is an overwhelming number- a figure that, in the words of Rudolph Gulianni, is "more than any of us can bare." And in looking it up, I just read several of the names and ages of those who perished. Doing so, brought tears to my eyes in a way that numbers can not. But try to imagine a list of 28,000 . . . Or double - or even triple that . . . We were likely closer to that possibility than any of us would ever want to know.

How many lives were spared by the extraordinary sequence of events? What if the first tower hit had been the first to collapse and it had done so in about the same amount of time it took for tower two to collapse? Thousands - perhaps even tens of thousands of people would not have made it out and away from both buildings. Instead, by the time the second tower was struck, a large majority of its occupants were either out, or well on their way to exiting the building. Since their building would collapse in almost half the time it took tower one to collapse after being struck, this was time they had to have to escape. The fatalities in the streets and in tower one, if it had collapsed in the same amount of time as tower two (as people struggled to exit both buildings), would have been ten-fold.

Was God at work in the midst of the "everyday" that was this particular hellish day?

I think he was.

And I think he still is.

In little ways that you and I could never imagine, and more obviously through the dedicated lives, teaching and healing words of Christians, Jews and real Muslims everywhere. And, no less important, through the shared words of peace and hope and love of those who don't yet know the name, or the face of the one they reflect so well.

There will be setbacks to be sure. Big ones. But God has, and can, and will work with all of us as we seek to build the kingdom in the midst of this crazy, mixed up, and sometimes horrifying world.

Count on it.

He is right where he has always been.

He is here.