When Time Stood Still

They say you never forget where you were the moment something life changing happens. Well I'll never forget the first time in my life that time stood still.

It was 9:00 am. My brother Jonathan and I had sneaked into his room during the morning chores. We were supposed to be cleaning, but we had sneaked away to try to catch a few minutes of our favorite "kids shows" on PBS. At 9:00 am, we turned on the TV. but we didn't find our shows.


We saw this and froze.

"I think we need to go get dad..." Jonathan quivered in a very frightened ten year old voice. He instantly knew something was horribly  wrong.

"No, don't worry about it. It's just a movie." I assured him.

I knew it was too early in the day for there to be a movie on TV, but in my shocked 12 year old mind, it HAD to be a movie because that building got hit by an airplane with people in it, and airplanes with people in them only crash into buildings in movies and in foreign countries.  No way could it be real life....

At  9:03am, when when I watched a second plane hit the second tower, my 12 year old heart sunk and my blood turned cold as a realized not only was this real life, but real people had just died right before my eyes. I frantically changed the channel, still hoping it wasn't real. It was the same thing on the next channel. and the next....and the next. Then, before I could digest it, the Pentagon was burning and another plane had crashed in a field somewhere! It was "terrorists" my dad said with heartbreak in his eyes. He told us, as our family watched together, that our country was headed for war, that this was history in the making.

 I remember thinking, "This is Pearl Harbor to me."

 I woke up on September 11, 2001 as a twelve year old kid, but that night, I went to bed a lot older. I had seen my country attacked. I'd seen people die. my safe American bubble had burst, and I realized that life is short, and dangerous. Like Pearl Harbor was for generations past, the moment the towers fell, was a huge mark on the timeline of my life. Until that point, time moved slowly, but after that, the clock seemed to speed up. I blinked my eyes and our country was at war. I went to sleep, woke up, and it had been a year, then two, three, four, then five.

Today I woke up, and it had been eleven years. Eleven whole years. Children have been born since then that don't remember that day. Grass has grown where rubble was, where blood was spilled, where tears were shed. I look at the pictures of "Ground Zero" today and I see beauty where the rubble used to be, and it makes me think of a man named Joseph. I remember the tragedies of his life, how mistreated and abused he was. His life was as full of trouble as Ground Zero was once filled with ashes, but when the trouble was over, he was able to say the same thing that we can say today...

"You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20)

That was a terrible day. Yes. People died. Yes. It still hurts. Yes. But look here! Look! The trouble didn't last forever. Where there was once rubble and death and ugliness, trees are growing. The broken foundations of a pair of destroyed building are now a pair of beautiful fountains! And from a generation that will never forget September 11, 2001, a new one has grown that never will know it unless we tell them!

Let this day of memory remind you that we can have faith, that no matter how terrible the tragedy, our God is bigger and our God has a plan. Our God generously trades beauty for ashes, strength for fear, gladness for mourning, and peace for despair.