One year after. My writing pours out and joins a stream of words that started a year ago and today will rise to flood level. There is much to say. We can say it now. A year ago was a time for silent mourning. For reflection. Asking questions. Pointing fingers. Weeping. Feeling guilty, angry, saddened.
Where was I when the two towers tumbled?
Berlin. With friends. A conference about city Transformation. We had spent the day with a question. “What will it take for our nations to turn to God?” The video tape “Transformations 2” had ceased. Someone walked in with the news. The Towers in New York had fallen. Hundreds had died. Maybe even thousands. Everything we were doing stopped. The conference. The conversation. The program. The city. The world. Time.
We reacted with silence, prayer. We contemplated. On the way to the hotel, I stopped by a newly made memorial and added some poetry to the altar of flowers and cards. I don’t remember what I wrote.
My family were at home in Prague. Jessica Stricker, our administrator, was supposed to be in New York on the morning of the 11th. A typical stopover at JFK. But when she got to the airport in Prague, she sensed God telling her that she shouldn’t go. Or perhaps wasn’t going. It didn’t make sense at the time, seemed ridiculous, but she turned back from the airport and came home. The next day things became clear. Her connecting flight from New York never took place.
Another member of our team had a similar yet opposite experience. Derek Chapman was in England on the 10th. He sensed God telling him to go immediately to USA. He went to London Heathrow where they told him they had a ticket for $100 return if he left that evening. He boarded the plane and found himself in New York, on the morning of the 11th. The city was devastated and people were openly crying on the streets. He tuned in to God’s heart for the city and began to write down God’s thoughts, and pray over the survivors. He did that day after day, sending his thoughts back to our base in Prague.
A few days later I was in London and visited the British Library. A historical account of the bombing of Dresden by the Allied Forces was there. I listened to a tape by a lady that was just a girl when the bombs fell on her city. She was in the household bombshelter/cellar when she heard a bomb drop on her house and land in the cellar. At first there was silence and her parents lifted her out. She heard a loud noise, turned around and her cellar had become a furnace. She never saw her parents again.
I was moved by the tape. I walked outside the Library and thought about the fact that we were the ones (British, American, New Zealand, etc) who bombed that little girls house. We killed her parents. Perhaps we are not much better than the Arab Fundamentalists who killed innocents in New York. Certainly we are all human and the sin and shame of humanity is disgusting, base, horribly terrific. All of us need the grace of God that flows without limit to all who cry out to him.
Sasha Flek, who is translating the Bible in the desk next to mine right now, just read out Isaiah 7:4 and I thought I would write it in. "Don’t be frightened or demoralized by these two smouldering stakes.”
God, give peace and grace to those who still hunger for lost friends and family. Be their portion. Amen
Where was I when the two towers tumbled?
Berlin. With friends. A conference about city Transformation. We had spent the day with a question. “What will it take for our nations to turn to God?” The video tape “Transformations 2” had ceased. Someone walked in with the news. The Towers in New York had fallen. Hundreds had died. Maybe even thousands. Everything we were doing stopped. The conference. The conversation. The program. The city. The world. Time.
We reacted with silence, prayer. We contemplated. On the way to the hotel, I stopped by a newly made memorial and added some poetry to the altar of flowers and cards. I don’t remember what I wrote.
My family were at home in Prague. Jessica Stricker, our administrator, was supposed to be in New York on the morning of the 11th. A typical stopover at JFK. But when she got to the airport in Prague, she sensed God telling her that she shouldn’t go. Or perhaps wasn’t going. It didn’t make sense at the time, seemed ridiculous, but she turned back from the airport and came home. The next day things became clear. Her connecting flight from New York never took place.
Another member of our team had a similar yet opposite experience. Derek Chapman was in England on the 10th. He sensed God telling him to go immediately to USA. He went to London Heathrow where they told him they had a ticket for $100 return if he left that evening. He boarded the plane and found himself in New York, on the morning of the 11th. The city was devastated and people were openly crying on the streets. He tuned in to God’s heart for the city and began to write down God’s thoughts, and pray over the survivors. He did that day after day, sending his thoughts back to our base in Prague.
A few days later I was in London and visited the British Library. A historical account of the bombing of Dresden by the Allied Forces was there. I listened to a tape by a lady that was just a girl when the bombs fell on her city. She was in the household bombshelter/cellar when she heard a bomb drop on her house and land in the cellar. At first there was silence and her parents lifted her out. She heard a loud noise, turned around and her cellar had become a furnace. She never saw her parents again.
I was moved by the tape. I walked outside the Library and thought about the fact that we were the ones (British, American, New Zealand, etc) who bombed that little girls house. We killed her parents. Perhaps we are not much better than the Arab Fundamentalists who killed innocents in New York. Certainly we are all human and the sin and shame of humanity is disgusting, base, horribly terrific. All of us need the grace of God that flows without limit to all who cry out to him.
Sasha Flek, who is translating the Bible in the desk next to mine right now, just read out Isaiah 7:4 and I thought I would write it in. "Don’t be frightened or demoralized by these two smouldering stakes.”
God, give peace and grace to those who still hunger for lost friends and family. Be their portion. Amen
