Ten Years Have Gone By

It's hard to believe that ten years have gone by since that most vicious attack upon American soil. It's hard to believe that ten long years have elapsed since together with an equally shocked world, we Americans beheld with a unique admixture of outrage, sorrow, helplessness and puzzlement as the northeastern corner of our country was blanketed in an ominous haze of smoke, death and ruins. Hardly had the curtains of the new, twenty-first century been lifted to welcome in the new millennium than we were greeted with the most savage terroristic invasion, a carefully foreplanned trifocal attack by sadistic forces converting the normal means of air transport into violent weapons of mass destruction. Yes, already, ten years have gone by. How true is the reflection that the events of 9/11 that changed the world! How even more compelling is the reality that these acts of reprehensible aggression have changed America!

The country and Western song "I Can't Stop Loving You" has among its lyrics "They say that time heals a broken heart, But time has stood still since we've been apart." But apart from the fact that time has not stood still for the past ten years, that is, apart from the fact that we have not been frozen by our pain or immobilized by our anger but rather, that we have redoubled our efforts in securing our borders and have increased our understanding of the nature and dimension of foreign aggression, we are aware that time has no therapeutic properties of its own. Thus, even the Roman poet Ovid's line,"tempus edax rerum," time, the devourer of all things, falls short in its wishful affirmation. With the passage of time comes the gradual reduction of the initial pain as we, through tear-filled eyes, broken hearts and mounting uncertainties, slowly make the necessary and unpleasant adjustments to live without our loved ones. With the passage of time come (perhaps) a necessary re-evaluation and reformation of our priorities in life, indeed, maybe even an entirely new perspective of life and even above and beyond that, a new understanding of the meaning, value and purpose of life.

Life. What has 9/11 taught us concerning this reality? As we reflect on the fearful images of crumbling smoke-filled buildings, as we revisit pictures of anguished faces, as we hear again the piercing shrieks of frenetic escapees, and as we contemplate the radical personal, familial, community and national dislocations and incomprehensible losses, many of which still evade our knowledge, what new lessons come to mind? What have we learned? Sadly, our nation as a whole has not learned much. Signs of the upsurge of patriotism following the attacks and of the nationalistic resurgence marked by loud cries of "God bless America," by the defiant display of American flags on homes and by misguided clergy misquoting and misappropriating 2 Chron 7:14, "if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land." are no longer perceptible. Ten years have gone by.

However, Christians should have learned and will do well to remember that we are citizens of two kingdoms. We are also citizens of this world. As such, we are under the law and are to obey our masters as unto the Lord. At the same time, we are those that have been born again by the Holy Spirit of God and that are a new creation, those that are being framed and fitted for heaven, we realize our citizenship is in heaven, where we are already seated in our union with Jesus Christ, Eph 2:6, and from which we await his Second Coming, Phi 3:20, to take his home with him to the ultimate Promised Land. We are in this world but are not of it. We are living in exile away from our home for which we have an ever-increasing longing. We understand and accept that all things in this life are under the sovereign hand of God and that while such punishing events as those of 9/11 are alarming and terrifying, yet we also know that these are under his sovereign control and are included in his immutable, eternal decree. No! The Lord God did not cause these events but in a strange way, he is working out his eternal purposes for his own glory through them. The harsh reality of these inexplicable truths of the mystery of divine sovereignty does not cause us to doubt his love, mercy and goodness. God forbid! In times of darkness, we do not deny what the Lord has taught us concerning himself and his purposes in times of clarity and light. Can this truth be distilled into compact and compelling brevity? Yes. ""For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."" Jn 3:16.

Life. If ever there was a time for Americans as a whole and for Christians in particular to grasp its meaning, it is now. A loving and mysterious God has bequeathed to his people, to his church, the gospel, that is, the message of life eternal through faith alone in Christ alone, so that those who believe on him will be granted this life and be rescued from an unimaginably greater conflagration than that of 9/11. Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God, humiliated himself by taking on the weakness of human flesh and entering into a world of terrorists among whom he lived sinlessly and whose death sentence he absorbed in his own flesh on the cross of Calvary where he experienced the unyielding, consuming fire of the divine wrath. This was an event that far outstrips the dreadful horrors of 9/11 in every way. This same Jesus now offers himself to be received through the means of faith alone, not to good people but to terrorists who defame and deny him daily, to even Al-Qaeda terrorists! That's life! That's love!

What should we have learned from 9/11? That life, that is, our span on this earth is brief and uncertain and that “.. man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” Job 5:7. We also learn that not even Christians are exempt from the ferocious attacks of brutish enemies. However, of one thing we can be sure: a loving God has given us, who at one time were ferocious rebels without a cause against him, murderers of his most beautiful Son, life through Jesus Christ and has also bequeathed to us the Christian responsibility to share this news of reconciliation, with even our most vicious enemies. This is the God to whom those who have been granted eternal life continually sing "I Can't Stop Loving You." ….. but only because he first sang it to us.