5 Years On
It was one of those events where everyone will always be able to remember where they were when the planes struck. The images are unforgettable and as vivid now as they were that day, the cloudless sky filling with smoke and debris and agony….and that was just the start. How do we reflect now on the events of September 11, 2001? For those who lost friends, family, colleagues, businesses, 5 years is nowhere near enough time to fully come to terms with it. I still find it unbelievable that the thought of carrying out the attacks turned from thoughts…to plans…to actions.
The questions in my mid are simple, even as an onlooker to the tragedy. How do we manage to forgive? How do we manage to love our enemies, when their mandate is to cause death and destruction? Do we even attempt to understand their cause? As Christians, do we have a responsibility to think not as the world now does, but to be non-condemning? Do we ‘hate the sin and not the sinner’? I wouldn’t ask someone to try and answer all these questions, but they are just a few.
Or do the events of 9/11 become a way of connecting us closer to humanity, to our own mortality and the need to make every day count? When we are exposed to violence and danger of the most extreme kind, does it give us a glimpse of the grief that God must feel for his children who are suffering?
Dan Bevan

