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DOES GOD REMEMBER #1
“THE NUMBER YOU HAVE REACHED IS NOT IN SERVICE AT
THIS TIME”
It’s the same thing they said about Pearl Harbor. And November 22, 1963.
You remember where you were when it happened.
It’s been 363 days now since the realizations began to hit like deadly
dominos: the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, the grassy field
in Pennsylvania, the imploding skyscrapers, the specter of thousands of
deaths.
The question even Billy Graham could not answer, in the stark, stone silence
of the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. – and cannot answer now,
a painful year later – is this: Where was God when this happened? Did
the heavenly Father of these victims take a break on September 11, 2001?
Many courageous firefighters that day were following the commands of the
Scripture to rescue others, and lost their lives doing so. People up on
the 90th floor were going about their activities, remembering the verses
they had read earlier on the subway, the prayers they had prayed. They
had confessed God as their Protector, and that Protector now stood by
while they died. Why?
Intelligence agencies confessed, in the dark days to follow, that this
evil fantasy — flying commercial wide-body jets, fully loaded with jet
fuel, into America’s tallest skyscrapers — simply had never occurred to
them. Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, admitted to Meet the
Press’s Tim Russert, that no one had dreamed of something so evil. Cover
articles came out months later in all of our major magazines, screaming:
“You guys should have known!” Leads were never followed up, the clues
weren’t tracked down, the suspicions never resolved.
But there was One who knew EVERYTHING all along — the whole story, the
entire scheme — and that was God. And He’s supposed to know! Where was
God at 8:48 a.m.? When good kids like Rodney Dickens, an 11-year-old boy
who won a field trip to the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary
in California, pray with their parents for protection for the day, for
angels to be with them and guard their footsteps . . . what happened?
He and his two fellow winners, along with three teachers sponsored by
the National Geographic Society, all got on board one of the doomed flights
and perished in a fiery ball. Does the angel promise of Psalm 34:7 mean
anything or doesn’t it? Cell phones were so immediate, so efficient, on
that dark Tuesday, as survivors successfully dialed to tell spouses they
were safe. That old song, “Operator, get me Jesus on the line,” seems
rather hollow now as families of Christian victims mark this Wednesday’s
agonizing anniversary and attend memorial services and wonder why phone
lines work and prayer lines don’t.
It’s a fact of this planet’s sin-soaked history that murderers have very
often been allowed to murder. Clear back in the fourth chapter of the
Bible, when there were only four people walking around on this earth,
one of them picked up a weapon and bludgeoned another one to death. And
there’s only four people for God to keep track of! Not the tens of thousands
who were moving their way through the World Trade Center towers. Not six
billion, which is what heaven is supposed to be protecting now. Just four!
And yet the all-powerful Lord of all creation stood by, silent, unmoving,
His power masked, His defensive prowess hidden away, while a resentful
terrorist named Cain killed his fellow human being in the first attack
ever recorded.
Year after year, with tragedies raining down on us all, the books come
off the presses, grappling with this question: Where Is God? Disappointment
With God. The book by Rabbi Schulweis: For Those Who Can’t Believe. Where
Is God When It Hurts? In the last 363 days, there have been more such
volumes than ever. We have one to share with you too, and we’re painfully
aware of how inadequate its 127 pages must seem to someone whose heart
is still broken on the eve of the 9/11 anniversary.
Somehow, though, even in the darkness of not understanding, the human
race still seeks God. On that terrible, dark Tuesday, millions of people
moved wordlessly to the churches. Not just to memorialize the lost and
to pay tribute to the heroes, many at that time still unknown to an anxious
world. But also to seek this hidden God. To assure themselves that He
was still there, watching from the shadows of the Empire State Building
and the Statue of Liberty. We know in our hearts that somehow, for reasons
we don’t yet understand, God permits these things which cause Him a greater
ache than anyone else feels. Preachers everywhere, not just in the Big
Apple, struggled to find stuttering, clumsy words to express what we all
know inside: God is still good. God is still love. God weeps too.
Even with our hearts filled with such hurt, we’re invited to look soberly
at the big picture. God had — and still has — an Eden plan for this world.
A plan with no death, no sin, no explosions, no swastikas, no “cell groups,”
no guns, no bullets, no funerals. But for a very long time now, our world
has been held by an enemy named Lucifer. And it’s clear in Genesis, then
again in Job, and yet again in Revelation, that God does permit the blueprint
of the dragon named Satan to be manifested here. There’s such a thing
as free choice, liberty of conscience. People are invited to ally themselves
with God, but they’re also permitted to join forces against Him. Babies
are born pure and innocent, but as they grow up and reach the age of accountability,
God doesn’t force them into a straitjacket of holiness, of unthinking
good behavior. Young men like Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi grow into
their teen years and choose to enter the service of an Osama bin Laden
and then pick up box cutters, take over a 767 airplane, and use it as
an enormous flying bomb.
In the very beginning, our Creator God very clearly communicated with
heaven’s residents, and with Adam and Eve, and with their descendants,
that sin and death were inseparable curses. One would lead to the other.
And then He permitted them both for a certain length of time that only
He knows.
We can know one thing, though, with absolute assurance: God fixes it all
in the end. Not just by clearing away the piles of debris and rebuilding
those magnificent edifices, but by restoring LIVES. Those victims will
live again. Tom Burnett will rejoin his wife Deena; Jeremy Glick and Lyzbath
will stand as a couple again. A pregnant Lisa Beamer stood in the House
chambers as President Bush paid tribute to her husband, Todd, who, together
with Tom and Jeremy and unknown others, resisted the terrorists aboard
United Airlines Flight #93 and saved countless lives. God will reunite
that family and then eternally protect them.
So many people this week must have it just tear at them — Can’t we simply
go back in time! Just let me tear one year out of my calendar, to September
9 of 2001. That would fix it. I wouldn’t let my beloved go to work; we’d
stay home from that Boston-L.A. trip we’d planned. I’d have my wife call
in sick; the Pentagon could do without her. To simply erase September
11 from all world calendars. To have back the innocence, the carefree
simple joys of pre-terrorist life. To have those friends back again, with
their smiles, the banter, the cups of coffee in the World Trade Center
towers. Parents and friends would sacrifice anything they possibly could
to spin back the clock and have their loved ones safely in their arms
again. But death seems so permanent, so forever, so unfix-able.
Maybe you recall a New Testament story where Jesus arrives at the site
of a funeral. And Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha, are wild with grief.
Where had Jesus been? Why hadn’t He hurried? Because of course, now, four
days have gone by. Even Jesus can’t turn the clock back and give them
their brother back. Even Jesus can’t create a time tunnel and turn death
into life. But Christ calmly walks with them down to the cemetery, says
a prayer, calls Lazarus back to life, and then smiles. “Unwrap him and
let him go.” Problem solved. Death destroyed. For Jesus it’s so easy.
And what Jesus did for Lazarus that day, and for his grieving family,
is real. This is a true story. It’s not a fable, a fairy tale, one of
the great legends. A man was dead for four days . . . and Jesus, with
absolute assurance, brought him back to life. And what Jesus did in Bethany
2000 years ago, He is equally capable of doing now in New York City cemeteries
and at Arlington. The Bible promises in His own words: “I AM the Resurrection
and the Life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall
he live.”
And here’s an additional word of comfort. What happened on that Tuesday
— Jesus knows all about it. “There’s not a friend like the lowly Jesus;
No, not one. Jesus knows all about our sorrows; He will guide till the
day is done.”
In the Lazarus story, even while Jesus was still on the road, He suddenly
said: “Let’s go to Judea.” How come? How did Christ know his friend was
gone? There were no cell phones or faxes. The earlier messenger had simply
said: “Lazarus is sick.” How did Jesus have this latest update? Because
He just knows. Whatever grief you’re feeling today, Jesus already knows.
There’s no friend like the lowly — and loving and all-knowing — Jesus.
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