From the Ashes – Lessons from 9/11

You remember, of course, where you were when it all came down. And what you were doing, and with whom, and how you felt when you first saw the surreal images that caused so many of us to say “This can’t be happening.” Nothing in modern American history approaches the magnitude of September 11, 2001, though the Kennedy assassination and the Jonestown/Guyana tragedy may be close runner ups. So today we remember, and as a couple, Renee and I are asking ourselves what we learned from that horror, and whether or not the lessons have stuck. Two of them stand out.

First, I remember how we clung to each other. We’d been married 14 years by then; our youngest son still in elementary school; our oldest still at home but fully grown. We didn’t allow tv in the morning, so we stayed clueless of the disaster until just before noon when a friend called to see how we were handling it all. Only then did we know what “it all” referred to, and we gasped, grabbed each other and both sons, and prayed.

Not that I had any idea what to pray, really. We were more vulnerable in the face of 9/11 than we’d ever been, and that led to our first lesson: We’d better stay tight as a couple because, as a couple, we never knew what we’d be called to face. As I remember our marriage was doing fine at the time, but I can think of other times in our history when communication hadn’t been as good; closeness not so well protected. Every couple, like every country, needs to invest in itself, securing what’s good and correcting what isn’t. Because if 9/11 taught us anything, it’s that we’ve no clue what we may be called on to face and endure. Marital bonds, like national borders and treasures, call for vigilance, the high price of freedom and the requirement for safety. Plenty of forces out there don’t want your marriage to succeed, and they’ll be only too happy to invade and destroy. Never let them catch you sleeping.

Which leads to a second distinct but related lesson: Evil is relentless. It churned for years before it finally struck us that day, in that way. We knew it existed, sure, and in fact we knew the name of the group involved and that of its leader as well, so it’s not that we were clueless. But just because we knew we were hated by someone who could attack us didn’t mean we fully believed that they would. It’s one thing to know you have enemies; it’s another to recognize they’re committed, focused, relentless.

Peter also said we have an enemy, the Devil, who prowls around seeking out who he can devour. (I Peter 5:8) And if it’s true that Satan hates you, let’s not underestimate his hatred for your marriage. For you and your spouse to live in harmony, representing in this life the union between God and His people, means you are stewards of something noble, sexy and sacred, joyful and sobering. I’ve no doubt that the Serpent’s strategy was to first come between and and wife, then strike. And he’s been striking couples down ever since.

All the more reason to treat your union as something not only precious, but relentlessly loathed by a third party who’ll use any device in his arsenal to come between you, then strike, Evil, whether that of Al Qaeda or Lucifer, takes no breaks, knows no rest. No need to live in fear of it, but neither is there any excuse to be unprepared for its onslaughts. We’ve learned, and are learning, to pray daily for our family’s protection and for a healthy eternal perspective including, but certainly not limited to, an awareness of our adversary and his ruthlessness.

This is a day for recalling, respecting, praying and pondering. Grief over the event we remember is ongoing and, I suspect, can never be fully completed in this life. Too many lives lost; too much devastation. But what lessons can be learned from 9/11, however small, are marked victories in the face of something unimaginable but, praise God, something we can rise from as all, as a nation, as families, as individuals. So I’m determined to honor the thousands we lost in many ways, one of which will be to learn what can be learned from it all, apply the lesson, and never forget it.

God bless the memories of 9/11’s heroes, its victims and their families as well. And may the evil that created it be, like death itself, swallowed in victory.