Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
You wake up the morning after, wishing, Oh God, that it were just a nightmare, a Hollywood horror movie! And then it sinks in, it [9/11] was real. The world is different now. Those who pay to watch horror movies have gotten their money's worth--for free. Oh that horror movies could forever end--if we watch them we place ourselves in the biblical judgment of those who "love violence" (Psalm 11:5). The holy prophet pleads with us, don't look (Isa. 33:15), nor let our children see it.
But now the world's children have seen it, in undreamed-of horror. "We" were those running down the canyon streets to escape the falling fiery debris; "we" were no better than they; we corporately identified with them.
Only one event in history can match it in emotional impact--the 486 B.C. burning of Solomon's holy temple and the wanton destruction of "our" precious Holy City by the Babylonians. Think of yourself as one of "God's chosen people" transfixed by watching what you always thought was impossible. Where was "He who keeps Israel [who] shall neither slumber nor sleep" (Psalm 121:4)? Why did He let this "impossible" judgment happen?
The other passage of Scripture that suddenly comes into focus is what we never thought would be real in our lifetime: the sudden destruction "in one day" of "that great city" of Revelation 18 when it falls into the sea like a giant millstone. "Alas, alas, that great city!" (9-16).
Not only is American pride humbled, but so is that of the whole world that has gloried in "Babylon's riches" symbolized by glittering giant skyscrapers. An appropriate Bible chapter to read today is chapter 3 of the Lamentations of Jeremiah, written after the destruction of Jerusalem: "Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed. ... He does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men. ... Let us search and examine our ways, and turn back to the Lord" (22-40).
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: September 14, 2001.
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