"Refuge....................................."

My weekend, probably like most everyone else’s, has been filled with television presentations of either the events of 9/11 as it happened or memorial inaugurations just now taking place a decade down the road. Mixed in there somewhere, I also read the thoughts of an acquaintance (a preacher who recently succumbed to cancer) concerning changes such terrorist acts would/should bring to America and found myself not surprised when some comments suggested his lack of Christianity in so expressing his views. After a journey of nearly four decades in this, what has become quite clear to me is the truth that one’s claim of being “in” the faith in no way unifies us, as a body, in what we believe. If such tragedy as “hit us in our belly” ten years ago humbled us and took us to our knees in prayer, it yet remains to be said that, when we arose, we were one only in our loss… My pastor, this morning in sermon, reflected on how, on the evening of that fateful day ten years ago, every church in our area opened its doors and people gathered with no specific call to do so other than the oppressive weight of their sorrow, their hearts and voices joined in a weeping unto God. He compared it unto the travail of a woman in labor, but “fell short”, I felt, in suggesting that it was not a cry coming out of anguish or hopelessness, rather one flowing out of expectation. Not that I disagreed entirely with the picture as he painted it. Merely that I found his position failing to note the matter all depends upon on whether or not a man’s soul is anchored in the reality of His presence abiding in the depths of all that he is. Despair can hit bottom and bounce back void in its attempt to salvage some sense to things, or it can meet Him there within and step into the fullness of His grace, His faith, His promise. America needs to know that truth. Indeed, the Church needs to recover that truth, learning the necessity of surrendering our soul into His hands……