Days to Remember 4: 9/11

This is a date that not many of us will forget.

On September 11th 2001 I was also in  a tower, smaller by far than the World Trade Center, yet one of the tallest in our town.  Here it is:

I was visiting Ellen.  She was an older lady and beset with very serious illness (from which within a month she died to this world).  It was soon after 2:00pm British Summer Time and I had picked up a story of a potential bomb or plane crash in New York.  By the time I was at the hospital there was that general muttering about something big happening and my last listen to a radio emphasised how big things were becoming.

Sitting at Ellen's bedside it was possible to sense that a nurse here and there was speaking to another along the lines of, "Have you heard the News?" or "Something's happening in America, isn't it?".

What I will never forget is how, on that least normal of all 21st century afternoons, my pastoral visit to Ellen was absolutely unaffected.  She, it was clear, was coming to the close of her life.  We spoke together; we prayed to God who was not phased by unfolding drama elsewhere (he who upholds all things). I was about to travel through turbulent days: My sister in Christ was coming to that Place of Rest where such things are overwhelmed by the love of God and seeing her Saviour face to face.

It has always given me a perspective on 9/11.  As a Christian Pastor I have a higher calling than world events, even those triggered (as many of them have always been) by socio-religious frameworks.  Soul work is the real work.

For, as Jesus might have said, what does it profit a man if he gains [a lot of media attention and influence in Manhattan Planning Department] and loses his own soul? 

Higgs boson

Professor Stephen Hawking told the BBC this week that the result of an incredible thing that has happened in my lifetime (the almost-certain discovery of the Higgs boson particle at CERN, Geneva) cost him $100.  The scientists cheered at the Great Announcement of this (unconfirmed) discovery.  Hawking might have added that the Large Hadron Collider where it was probably discovered cost $10 billion.

This is the scientific equivalent of when I look on the back of a margarine container and discover a very obscure ingredient that was always there but I never knew for sure.  Then I carry on eating my toast.

I think I'll stick with being excited about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.  Unpredictable but prophesied, inexplicable yet inevitable, unapplauded but history-changing.

Haiti

The earthquake in Haiti makes Christians think.  Mostly it makes us think, 'How can we help?'.  For some, young in the faith, it rocks their confidence that God is Love.  That is not easily answered on a blog but a big clue comes from the Biblical statement that the greatest demonstration of God's love to disobedient human beings was not a new baby, a wonderful meal, a fine climate or the end of a great war.  It was a crucifixion.

Earthquakes are not easy, either, for people who oppose faith.  The people of Haiti might be feeling very angry with their Creator just now.    Better, though, to be a bewildered believer than to think of oneself as a self-contained blip among billions of others on an accidental fabric of meaningless history where incidental earthquakes take tens of thousands of other blips, including your family, out early.

If you click on to the Disasters Emergency Committee website you find that almost every charity there owes its existence to people of Faith.  As it happens several of them, including ActionAid and Help the Aged, owe their existence in some measure to one man!  CJC's legacy is helping Haiti 30 years after his own death.