That morning I had gone to work as usual--at the time I was working at a publishing firm in Bethesda, Maryland, on the other side of Washington, DC from our home in the northern Virginia suburbs. My wife, who worked for a Christian ministry, had not been at home that day as she had gone on a fundraising trip to another state. Sometime after 9:00 one of my colleagues mentioned seeing a television report of a plane hitting one of the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. As I remember, a number of us in the office then begin listening to a radio report on the apparent tragedy. Soon came reports of the attack on the second tower, and not long after that--much closer to home--news of the attack on the Pentagon. There were also other reports of alarming events that turned out not to be true--such as a report that there had been a bombing at the U.S. State Department in downtown DC.
Our company's management soon decided that it would be best to send everyone home. When we were informed that we could leave, I was somewhat concerned. I had come to work by Metro (the DC area's subway system) and since there was a Metro station at the Pentagon, I was afraid the whole system had been shut down, which would have meant I had no way of returning home. Fortunately, that did not turn out to be the case and I was able to return home via Metro. When I returned home, I discovered my wife had left a message on our telephone's answering machine, asking me if was aware of what had happened and expressing her shock at the events. I spent much of the rest of the day watching television reports of the horrifying events. At one point, I decided to take a walk in our neighborhood on what was a perfectly beautiful day in the later summer/early fall. What struck me most was how quiet it seemed without the sound of airplanes flying overhead, as was usually the case (this was because all flights within the U.S. had been grounded after the attacks).
After I went to bed that night, I received a telephone call from my wife's uncle, who lived in Hong Kong. He had seen reports of the terrorist attacks on the U.S., and knowing that we lived near DC, wanted to know if I was alright. I assured him that I was. He then asked me how close we lived to the Pentagon. I told him "about twenty miles" (I'm not sure that is correct!) and he responded "That close?"--which seemed a rather odd response to me, but I appreciated his concern.
About a week later, I had to drive past the Pentagon for some reason. As I drove past, the enormity of the destruction caused by the attack was quite apparent. And yet, about a year later, thanks to the relatively rapid reconstruction of the building, no outward sign of the attack remained.
Certainly, there are many, many lessons that could be drawn from the events of that horrific day, but rather than discuss the large-scale implications of those events, I would like to focus on some lessons applicable to each of us on a personal level. I suppose one such lesson would be our need to remember the incredible uncertainty of our lives. Thousands of people went to work as usual that day, not realizing that they--or someone they loved--would not be returning home that evening. Our lives are more fragile than we realize. As Job laments, "Mortals, born of woman, are of few days and full of trouble. They spring up like flowers and wither away; like fleeting shadows, they do not endure" (Job 14:1-2, NIV). This is a reality we all would do well not to forget, easy though it may be.
Another lesson might be that what people believe really does matter. The terrorists who carried out the attacks were firmly convinced that they were doing God's will by killing thousands of "infidels" and that their reward would be Paradise. In contrast, Todd Beamer, a passenger on one of the hijacked planes, United Flight 93, was a devout Christian. He recited the Lord's Prayer and Psalm 23 with other passengers before joining with them in storming the plane's cockpit in an attempt to stop the terrorists from using the plane to hit another target, possibly the U.S. Capitol or the White House (see here). The lesson here is that our beliefs may be personal, but they can have a tremendous influence for good or ill on others. Of course, our beliefs are also vitally important for us individually. Of those men I have just mentioned, there was only one that I am fairly certain found himself in Paradise that day.
Image of the reconstruction of the Pentagon after 9/11 from Wikimedia Commons