Church Directory
“How Can it be 23 Years Later Since 9/11 ?”
Pastor Barry Klein, Staples Church of Christ
Like so many historical events of monumental proportions, we vividly remember “where we were” when devastating and tragic news reaches us. Now here we are on this date of September 11, 2024 almost a quarter of a century since those surreal news bulletins were beginning to filter in about New York City and the surrounding areas being attacked.
So “science fiction” were the early reports as I was heading to a ministerial meeting at Staples Alliance Church, that I thought the initial radio reports must be talking about some misguided single engine prop plane that had hit the first Twin Tower. Indeed, it all felt apocalyptic. And we have had many horrors now since with mass shootings and wars along with the deep personal heartaches in your own life’s journey.
What are we to do with life’s “unexpected” twists, turns, disappointments and losses as they take on so many disguises? It is an age-old question about suffering and injustice. In some quests, it leads to cynicism about God at best and dismissing Him at worse.
On my office bookshelves, I have but a very small sampling of books compared to the whole of books down through history, trying to grapple with and trying to come to terms with pain and suffering. Philip Yancey entitles his book, “Where is God When it Hurts?” But, Joni Eareckson Tada, quadriplegic at the age of 17 due to a diving accident, entitles her book, “When God Weeps.”
No, this side of heave, there will be no easy answers to suffering, but what if the God of the universe cares, grieves and even enters this world of suffering to walk it with us? Would (or does) that make a difference...at least in the discussion about what sometimes can’t even be fully described when we hurt so bad?
It really is very incredible (and even humanly incomprehensible) that God would leave heaven and take on our humanity in His Son, Jesus. But He did. History is marked in time by Jesus’ coming 2,000 years ago. Even people who don’t believe God exists, mark their lives each day by our calendars based on “in the year of our Lord.”
Yes, we have some deep balm in a very broken world when we hear in Isaiah 53:3 (NIV) the prophecy of the coming Messiah that “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.” Then shortly after in Isaiah 53:4a, “Surely He took up our pain and bore out suffering.” And it just keeps going in Isaiah 53:5 (and listen to the hard verbs), “But He was pierced for our transgressions (sins), He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him.”
As we ask the “whys?” of life, often being me with inadequate answers or silence, we do have the ultimate answer to suffering in “The Man of Sorrows,” Jesus. Who can question how Jesus walks suffering with us and endured it beyond comprehension when we even have to turn our eyes away when viewing Mel Gibson’s “The Passion?” Let Jesus’ wounded body hold on to you in suffering.
