Story #26 in the Covenant series
There are defining tragedies for every generation, and those who live through them never forget what they were doing when the news broke. Pearl Harbor was like that, as was president Kennedy’s assassination. The people of this generation will never forget where they were when they heard that planes had flown into the World Trade Center towers.
Not only do we not forget where we were when a national tragedy happened, we never tire of telling the story. On the anniversary of these events, people tell each other what they were doing when they heard. It is a ritual that clearly helps us deal with the pain and grief.
On September 11, 2001, I was coming home from dropping off my oldest at school. I heard on the radio that a plane had hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center. By the time I got home a second plane had hit. I knew then that something was terribly wrong. I walked into my house to find Jeanene, in tears, sitting in front of the television. The two of us watched until the towers fell. At that point I emailed the members of our church and told them that I was going to the church and that the doors would be open if anyone wanted to come and pray. I spent the afternoon there, numbly watching the news reports on TV. People began showing up around 6 pm. We lit the candles in our fireplace and stood silently in prayer. A few people hugged and drew aside to pray together. There was no formal service. People came and went. Sometime around 9 pm I was left alone at the church, and it seemed to me that we were done. I turned out all of the lights except for two or three candles. Candles in a dark church are exceedingly beautiful. Stunningly beautiful. At least I’ve always thought so. I watched them burn for a long time. Then I blew them out and a sorrowful darkness fell over the church. I had feel my way to the door.
We all remember the days that followed. Our entire nation was numb. No one was sure how to get on with everyday living. At Covenant Baptist Church we had our own dilemma. If you remember how it was in those days, many people found themselves wanting to go to a church. It seemed appropriate to design our worship service for the following Sunday in a way that addressed our national grief. But one of our families, the McJiltons, had scheduled that Sunday to dedicate their young son Kevin. The McJiltons had extended family in from out of town. I didn’t want to cancel the event.
So the question was: How do we have a service that addresses this terrible trauma that our nation has suffered while at the same time having our traditional service of dedication for this little boy?
The answer came to me as I was looking at our order of worship, which is a single, 8.5 x 11 inch piece of paper folded in half to make a small booklet. It occurred to me that the first half of the service could be on the left of the order of worship and be dedicated to prayer for the victims, their families, and our country. The second half of the service could be on the right and be our service of dedication to love this child and be his church.
The top of the order of worship said, “A Covenant Response to Tuesday, September 11, 2001” The left side had a single word as a header – Prayer. The right side also had as single word – Dedication.
The church was packed that Sunday. Every Covenant member was there, along with a number of people who attended occasionally. We also had people who never went to church but were there because of the tragedy. A local police officer – on duty – pulled into the parking lot, removed his hat, and stood at the back. During the first half of the service we prayed. That’s all we did. Our prayers were sung, spoken out loud, and spoken individually in times of silence. Some wept. Some stared ahead. Others looked angry. We offered no answers or explanations. We just prayed.
And then we made a turn. I noted that prayer was a comfort, and more than that, a commandment. We are commanded to pray in good times and in bad. But something more than prayer is needed. Action is called for, or else our prayers become anemic and academic, perhaps even a way to avoid life.
Action always sounds good after a tragedy, doesn’t it? Let’s go out in the world and do something. Let’s stop evil people. Let’s change our nation. I have no problem with such sentiments, but the truth is, everyday people do not have the power to stop evil. Even nations cannot stop evil. So at the halfway point in our service, I held Kevin McJilton in my arms and spoke to my friends.
We are here today to promise that we will help care for Kevin McJilton. As his church, we are promising to love him, teach him about what it means to be a follower of Christ, and make our church a good place for him, a place where he will want to be. I know it seems like a small thing when we are faced with such a great evil. But remember that God works in this way. The work of God’s goodness is like a mustard seed. It starts small and then grows.
The evil done by terrorists starts big and scary, then fades quickly in time. Their power to hurt is short-lived. But Kevin is only beginning his life. If we help nurture the life of one child, the cumulative good from that life grows exponentially.
This is what we should do in response to what happened 5 days ago. We should give birth to small acts of goodness and kindness in our world. Let those who love evil start with big and loud and scary things. We will start with small things, small acts of goodness. This is how the gospel works.
Kevin’s service changed the way I think and react to large tragedies. Evil may seem big, too big to fight. But we are not God, and we are not charged with fixing this world of sin. Our charge is to follow Christ in small ways and bring what goodness we can into the world. It was, after all, Jesus who reminded us that even a cup of cold water offered in His name will not be forgotten.
Gordon Atkinson
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| Our order of worship for Sunday, September 16th, 2001 |
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| The cover |
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Beaitful story, Gordon, made all the more important by its rightness.
On September 11, this year. I didn’t cry. I stopped briefly for some prayer, then went on with my life. It’s been that way for a couple of years now. I didn’t experience direct, personal loss on 9/11. But I did in September 2007, and again in 2008 when my brother-in-law was killed in Afghanistan.
But your story brought back the memories, and I cried. And that is a good thing.
On Sept 11th I was holding my 1 week old son going “what have I done.” After a few days though I came to the same conclusion. Jacob was dedicated to the Lord shortly after and all I could do is promise him to the Lord and raise him as best as I can in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
Thanks for sharing this moment with us Gordon.
i can just imagine the room lit with candle light.
it would be nice to have a time of worship/prayer in that light.
little
candles
all burning
with
Love
Wow.
Just… wow.
Thanks everyone.
I sat for a long time with the candles. I knew when I blew them out it was going to be very dark. And it felt like we would all be walking in darkness for quite some time. Of course, this lead to a war which we still fight, and changes to our sense of security. Other changes, many that I don’t think are good for our souls.
Staying with the candles was like hanging onto a little piece of life before 911
For me & our church, the horror started in early August, 2001, when two of our missionaries, Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer, were taken captive in Afghanistan. When the Towers fell, we realized something much bigger was going on. Our worship leader composed a simple song with the words, “Jesus Loves Afghanistan,” and that is all I can hear every year when the anniversaries come back around.
This sentence…
People came and went.
That I could be so gracious, to myself in my own griefs… to others in theirs. Yes, that I could be so gracious…
My most vivid memory of this worship service was Misty (What was she nine years old?) walking to the microphone and praying for Osama bin Laden. Truly a “pin drop” moment. A little child led us that day with her earnest prayer asking God to help “Mr bin Laden” find and learn to live in God’s love.
I thought I had finished crying for this year’s anniversary, but I guess I wasn’t. Thank you for sharing this. Thank you, too, Jeanene, for sharing about Misty’s prayer. Praying for our enemies to find and learn to live in God’s love is something we all too often forget to do. It takes a child to remind us of that unconditional love we are all blessed to experience, if we will only open ourselves to it.
Just found this Gordon. I love the last paragraph and just shared it and your link on Facebook.
I was sitting at my desk, writing about … something, I forgot. The phone rang: a neighbor I’d showed how to argue her case in court, whose computers I’d fixed for several years, whose husband plowed the snow from our driveway on a whim, on the Caller ID.
“Planes just crashed into the World Trade Center Towers in New York. They’re saying muslims did it. Go turn on your television.”
“Oh Sh*t. Thanks.”
Shortest conversation I’d ever had with her.
We watched the Towers collapse and Manhattan disappear under a rising cloud of near-microscopic crystals that cut lungs to mush. Like volcanic ash, the kind of crystals that are only made by the intense heat of extremely high explosive.
There was no doubt in my mind that the airborne perpetrators were muslims. Not muslims like me, but demented, insane, deluded, drunk on adrenaline and intoxicated by their admiration for themselves, their “purity,” their “heroism” and “courage,” and their expectations of eternal bliss they imagined is Promised to martyrs. A “blow against the Great Satan,” a deadly strike against the new Towers of Babel, monuments to the god of Mammon, and retaliation in the bargain.
And I knew it wasn’t the Israelis they so despised who had laid the explosives to produce that deadly rising cloud of vaporized concrete.
And I knew we would be blamed. Video clips of a years-old Palestinian street celebration were already running end-to-beginning, constantly on CNN. For days, mayhem and cataclysm interlaced with magically-appearing photos of nineteen Arabs using stolen identities, known to American intelligence for years and on the “watch” lists, flashed across the screen. A taunting phone call to a Top Secret telephone number about the President or Air Force One or some Eyes-Only coded password or double-talk message that no one could possibly know.
An unscorched passport miraculously escaped the holocaust to land on bare ground beneath the Towers. The Israeli security company’s fuzzy-image videos of the terrorists walking through the terminal gates. The jumbo-jet hole in the Pentagon showing less damage than a PiperCub-like propeller plane did to another tall building not very long after. And long-scheduled “training maneuvers” that left two military jets to cover the eastern seaboard, who couldn’t leave the ground without high-level approval.
Oh, yeah, we knew where this was going. “The Revolution” has been televised.
And in the days that followed, half a dozen murders ~ most of them only imagined to be muslims. A foiled arson attempt on a Seattle mosque. A pickup truck driven into another mosque on the other side of the continent. A head-covered waitress with a .45 rescued from having to use it to protect herself from some truckers by her employer who ran the truck stop. And incessant outrage screaming from the television … directed at me.
And the streets around a mosque we knew filled with cars that brought a mob with a banner reading “Pray in Peace, Muslims, we will protect you.” And they did.
And around-the-clock impromptu ad hoc militias guarding our mosques all over the country for the next two weeks.
And Christians and Jews and people of no faith at all coming to our mosques and Islamic Centers around the country asking how they could help, bringing reassurances, overloading our Imams’ capacities to tell them about Islam and the religious liberty that brought them to America, found nowhere else in the world.
A surly sour-faced Town Council member of “the other party” ~ a bitter political opponent ~ came out of the Post Office while I was going in … “Hey. We know it wasn’t you guys.”
And not so much as a hoot or a whistle or a jeer did we hear, nor an angry glance did we see, not once, as we shopped in the City or walked in the park in our obviously muslim garb as if nothing had happened.
And still it came. Odigo messages warning Israelis to avoid the World Trade Center. An Attorney General cautioned against public air transportation for the next few days. A flurry of “put” options of American and United stocks, the windfall profits still waiting to be collected by unidentified sellers. The old “Plan Bojinka” that became 9/11 found on a laptop left behind by a fleeing bin Laden flunky, fully ten years before 9/11. And a Port Authority order, around the same time, to take down the Towers because aluminum bonded to steel had eroded the outer shells supporting the structures, that were too near other buildings to be demolished and would have to be dismantled piece by piece for more than it cost to build them.
The muslims did it. The muslims did it. Saddam Hussein did it. The Taliban refuse to turn over Osama without seeing concrete evidence that was forthcoming but never arrived. We had him surrounded but he slipped away ~ while a thousand Pakistanis were flown back from Afghanistan on US transport planes just before the bombs started slaughtering innocent Afghani farmers and children.
Sulimon laid down his rifle and surrendered with his expatriate cannon fodder company from fighting the opium barons and warlords ~ America’s instant new allies in the invasion of Afghanistan ~ and watched them disarmed with a promise of safe passage out of the war zone, only to be slaughtered nearly to a man under CIA supervision behind the high earthwork walls of an abandoned prison, drowned in the basements or shot with their hands still tied behind their backs. And where is Sulimon? Doing life in a federal prison in California for fighting the drug runners and rapists, “aiding the terrorists.”
Oh, we know. We have to know. Our lives ~ our flower and vegetable gardens, the public-school years of our children, our volunteer work at the Senior Center, our secretive back-yard trash-burning in violation of the Fire Codes, our rapport with the local gendarmerie and the Courts ~ may depend on it. And what do we know?
Americans welcome muslims as neighbors. In sixteen years as “new in town,” not one event in our lives can be attributed to “fear of the other” or religious animosity. Not one. And in the twenty years before that, in scores of other places in three States, one “Go Home!” shouted from a passing car. We’re already home, thank you, no matter. For years as the only white family in the center of far-south black-black Chicago ~ not once. No bureaucratic hassles, no “tail-light” traffic stops, no demands that our children remove their colorful crocheted headgear or wrapped scarves, no garbage thrown on our lawns, nothing stolen from our yards, no mysteriously appearing leaflets or literature left on our porch ~ nothing.
Our children stay home from school for three days for our two annual religious festivals: excused absences with homework assigned by telephone each afternoon. Friday prayers? Fine, no problem. Have a good weekend. Our high school Valedictorian left home with a four-year scholarship from a local group we didn’t even know existed. And we haven’t even lived here for one generation, let alone the average six or eight.
Americans ~ hospitable, not “tolerant.” Neighborly, not fearful or suspicious. Friendly, maybe formal, but not disdainful. People, like muslims. With manners.
And a secretive organized party spread through the highest levels of American government and information media, hell-bent on eliminating Islam and muslims from everywhere they can reach, as if their lives depended on it. But first and foremost and absolutely in America, at any cost ~ to others, preferably Americans. It’s an unspoken conspiracy so vast and powerful that it makes Pharaoh’s slaughter and oppression of the people of Moses look like a petty annoyance. And the cost these days is measured in American blood. And as they suck the lives out of the uninitiated, they teach their “professional colleagues” how to do the same.
Yes, we know. We watch it on television. The only “minority” politically correct to demonize ~ like the Nazis demonized the Jews ~ is muslims. In fact it’s politically incorrect in America to not falsify Islam and make muslims an object of fear and loathing. Saying a word in favor of anything muslim is unpatriotic. Bordering on treason. “Supporting terrorism.” It’s un-Christian. It’s anti-Semitic. It’s an abuse of the Constitutional Freedom Of Speech that cares not a whit about the flood of pornography America has “tolerated” for three generations or the grotesque bloody massacres pouring into the eyes of our children.
Muslims murder and maim and manufacture mayhem and monstrosity. We lie and we lobby for “special privileges” and lay in wait for the least opportunity to “take over” and close all the bars and lock up the women and slaughter the infidel Christians and Jews. We live in “sleeper cells” and like to fly airplanes into tall buildings and bomb supermarkets and discos and bars in Israel full of Russian immigrants fleeing to discover their religion and live as third-class citizens in a workers’ paradise down the hill and across the barricades from spa-like apartment settlements funded by taxpayer and tax-exempting American dollars.
And of course we’re filthy, unkempt, uncultured, prowling in search of white girl coeds to rape in the back seats of our Beemers and Volvos bought with extorted American petro-dollars.
Not to speak of our false God and warrior bandit pedophile false prophet, and our forged “Holy Book” written by an illiterate madman to fool a billion and a half people with no brains at all, living in tents, milking their camels and who knows what we do with our sheep?
And we have a really sick, twisted sense of humor. We can’t tell which is more hilarious ~ the ridiculous stereotype or the dwindling masses of people who swallow it or the panicked hysteria of the people who can no longer sell it to the American people by turning up the volume and raising a ruckus, who set up a trap and fell into it.
Three thousand martyrs swept directly to paradise in an hour without an account of any wrong they may have done in their entire lives. Thousands more with wounded hearts, many mistakenly despising a billion people they’ll never know. And millions addicted to unattainable fantasy, laboring for pennies on the dollar while the wealth of their grandchildren pours into a black hole of contrived nightmares visited on the other side of the planet and the profits they produce flee the commonwealth and leave the country.
Is there a more patient, pacific, productive population anywhere? Are there more friendly, fraternal, family-oriented flocks across any seas or borders? Is there another place where differences between peaceful outlooks don’t matter? There’s no place to flee from a tangible image of paradise surrounded by hellfire.
God, I love my country. Please don’t hold me to account for my affection for something other than You. You, and You Alone, come First, Last, and Always. I’m just grateful that You let me be born here and live, now, to witness this beautiful nation You’ve blessed with so many people who look to You for a rescue from the horrors of the damned and withhold their hands for fear of doing injustice.
Give them salvation from themselves as You’ve given it so freely to me, who earned a place in the Towers but didn’t get there in time. And thank You for giving me life in Your Presence forever.
That’s what the tragedy of 9/11 defined and brought to mind. I don’t watch the re-runs.
nAncY:
“i can just imagine the room lit with candle light.
it would be nice to have a time of worship/prayer in that light.”
Or in the present of angels standing in ranks bowing to our God as they are light of His way.
Hajj Dawud:
“Americans ~ hospitable, not “tolerant.” Neighborly, not fearful or suspicious. Friendly, maybe formal, but not disdainful. People, like muslims. With manners.”
Yes I agree! My family settled in Iowa 8~generations ago from a Muslim heritage they received in Lebanon, and ever since have been estranged of our ethnic land because we find “people, like muslims. With manners” here.