Like you, I recounted what I was doing twenty years ago this past Saturday.
I learned about the attacks in Manhattan from my sister, who had called my apartment in Tucson, Arizona. Located in the Mountain Time Zone, I was a couple of hours behind what was happening. I recall rubbing my eyes awake and shaking my head at the images I saw on the TV. I had served a church in New York City the two years before my graduation in May of 2001, and I had friends who either worked at the World Trade Center or lived nearby.
“Jeff,” my sister said to me on the phone, “They’ve also hit the Pentagon.”
Our brother, Vann, was an officer in the US Air Force. He was serving a post at the Pentagon.
“Mom and Dad haven’t heard from him,” she said.
But several hours later, we did. And I learned soon after that that my friend who worked at the World Trade Center had actually called in sick that morning and not gone in to work. My seminary friend who lived in lower Manhattan had been on his morning run and had witnessed the attacks firsthand. He and his family were okay.
“This changes everything,” I remember saying absently into the phone.
What an understatement that would turn out to be.
As we are all too keenly aware, the events of 9/11 ushered in a season of fear and terror. I do not think it is an oversimplification to note how much of what spiraled out from that September day and into the next two decades were within a degree or two of the horror of those attacks. I believe that an argument can be made that much of what has transpired since 9/11 can be directly connected to the stress, uncertainty, anger, and anxiety that we felt that day.
The landscape of the past two decades has had moments of triumph and joy, like moments of sunshine on a charcoal gray day. But the overarching setting to which these rays of light peaked through is one of a raw and fractured land dotted with lightning on the horizon.
How does one combat deep-seated fear? How does one address the systemic anger that we have for the Other? With what do we replace the cynicism, suspicion, and ill-tempered attitude that we frequently feel?
The author of Ecclesiastes reminds us that life is full of seasons and that none of them lasts forever. Indeed, there is a time for everything. It is hope, then, that keeps us
searching the overcast skies for holes in the clouds. And it is the faith that we have in God, who through Christ Jesus our Lord redeemed the darkest night in a flash of resurrection light.
I once learned that fog and low clouds burn off more quickly once the sun peaks through and warms the ground beneath the cloud deck. The hole in the clouds that allows sunlight to shine through can change the atmosphere beneath the overcast and create a chain reaction that burns off clouds.
If true, then the sunlight from God that warms our faces will change us, change our relationships, change our communities, and transform our world. Yes, perfect love casts out fear and darkness (1 John 4:18).
Songwriter John Smith remind us of this truth in his song, “A Hole in the Clouds.”
“Look up ahead, ‘cause there’s a hole in the clouds,
There’s a break in the weather now the sun is coming out,
It’s like a ray of hope shining down.
Hey, look up ahead ‘cause there’s a hole in the clouds.”
Yes, we have experienced breaks in the clouds and moments of sunlight these last two decades. We have. Children and grandchildren have been born, opportunities have been realized, and progress has been made. But these moments of hope have felt fleeting and short-lived. We hunger for a new season not clouded by anger and fear.
So may the shafts of light that have scattered the darkness these last 20 years become a glorious sun-drenched expression of your hope, O God, in the next 20 years. Warm and change us, Lord, inside and out, so that your perfect love might transform our world by casting out fear and darkness.
John Smith’s song, “Hole in the Clouds” can be heard here: https://youtu.be/g9omgHNMUOk