For as long as we live, the horrifying events of this last week will haunt us. The dark, menacing evils of yesterday including Pearl Harbor, Nazi Germany, Oklahoma City, and Columbine have again found expression and have followed us into twenty-first century. The Hollywood images that used to entertain us only in theatres have become unthinkable realities. These are realities that we must somehow now contend with. The national premier of the Arnold Schwarzenegger thriller movie "Collateral Damage" had to be postponed because its content was too realistic!
By the hour we are glued to our televisions as events unfold, wondering when or even if it will all come to an end! Understandably, we are alarmed. We are shell-shocked. We are angry. We are vengeful. We are sorrowful. We are sick to our stomachs. A plethora of emotions overwhelm us, and understandably so. Who could have ever imagined? Who could have dreamt up such an unspeakable plot? We thought such evils were behind us, and yet here we are trying to regroup, trying to cope, and trying to recollect ourselves.
A lesson from the past.
The events of this week led me back to my library to reread a book titled The Eclipse of Heaven by A.J. Conyers. The book was written a few years after Hurricane Hugo slammed into the coast of South Carolina at Charleston. During that time, trees once standing so harmlessly outside front doors suddenly came thundering into living rooms and attics. The beauty of the Atlantic Ocean turned ugly and threatening, washing treasures of a lifetime out to sea. Conyers describes how disasters upset our sense of the permanence and force us to lose confidence in the physical world. He points out that during times of disaster and tragedy, "Order is replaced with chaos. Certainty is replaced by questions."
His words are a fitting description of what has changed within us this last week. Certainty has been replaced with questions. Order has been replaced with chaos. Modern conveniences have become devastating tools of destruction. Our own people have been turned into living, breathing missiles. Our workplaces have become potential targets of terror and decimation. Our streets have become war zones strewn with carnage. 911 is no longer just a number we dial for help. Rather 9/11/01 is a symbol of our vulnerability.
This week has changed us in ways we may never fully understand. Historians will look back on these days and interpret them as one of the many defining moments in American history, and perhaps even world history. Where do we turn when the certainties of our ordered world become uncertainties? What do we do with this anxiety? This fear? This worry? What do we do with this rude intrusion on our security? Where do we go from here? Where do we turn?
Turning inward.
Well, if I may be purely descriptive the answer is that we are turning inward. We are turning to the only thing we can truly trust, and that is ourselves. We are digging deep within ourselves. We are soul searching. Sure, we will lick our wounds for a while! But watch out. We are Americans. We're going to suck it up. We're uniting. We're going to stamp this problem out with every means at our disposal. We're going to cover our backside. We're going to bury our dead. We're going to employ sky marshals. We're going to rebuild the city skylines. We're going to hunt our cowardly enemies down and smoke them out of their holes. We're going to decimate entire governments and empires with our power. We're going to boldly stare this uncertainty, this fear, in the eye and conquer it with technological innovation, governmental regulation, psychological therapy, military intervention, economic somersaults, and political maneuvering. We're going to strike back and hold our own. We have already sounded the battle cry, "We shall overcome. We shall overcome."
Where do we turn? Well, we are turning inward.
During Hurricane Hugo, when all sense of certainty and order was lost and people searched for answers, it was thought that a great revival would sweep the land. A.J. Conyers recalls hearing a radio commentator saying, "Wait till this Sunday. There will be more people in church this Sunday than at almost any time you and I have known."
It only makes sense that in times of national disaster, when evil has leashed its ugly head, we would look outward and upward, right? It makes sense that we would see our utter dependence on God, and that God alone would become the object of our faith. It makes sense that we would turn everywhere, anywhere, except inward. But that is rarely the case. We just keep digging deeper. We keep trying to put the pieces back together but keep coming up short. We think that the missing piece is on the table when in fact, it may have been knocked off the table altogether.
A.J. Conyers talks about the Sunday after Hurricane Hugo struck South Carolina. "I went to church that Sunday. We sat in the darkened sanctuary without a sound system or air conditioning, and with the buzzing of our neighbors' chain saws in the background, we worshiped. I did not do a scientific survey of churches, but for that particular church there was a small crowd in attendance that day, not a large one. Moreover, they were almost all "regulars", those who would be there even under adverse conditions, and they were not at all ushered out of their houses and into church by the fearsome aspect of the recent display of nature’s powers. And from what I learned, the experience was roughly the same in all of the area churches."
During the Hurricane Hugo disaster people searched within for that missing piece. They looked within for answers. They looked within for rationalizations. They looked within for wisdom and strength. They put faith in the human spirit. They had resolved to rebuild the puzzle of their lives without the one essential piece that could make sense and which could provide the order that their chaotic lives needed. And so they rebuilt their lives and their homes, and churches remained as empty as did their lives.
Making sense of the chaos.
There is a place for human effort. There is a place for making firewood out of trees fallen by hurricane winds. There is a place for recovering that which was lost. In light of the events of this week there is a place for rebuilding the city skylines. There is a place for sky marshals, military intervention, and investigation. But there is also a place for God in all of this. This puzzle will not make sense without God. He is the ordering principle of our often chaotic and uncertain existence.
In 1907 P.T. Forsyth penned these prophetic words of warning, "If within us, we find nothing over us, we succumb to what is around us."
What so many of us today are missing is a sense of context. We are missing the divine and the trancendent. We are missing our holy loving God, Jesus Christ. We are turning inward and we are coming up empty because there is nothing within us that is beyond us. There is an absence of the eternal, of the Spirit of God.
This week, grieving New Yorker after grieving New Yorker has been asked by television crews, "How are you going to get through this? How will you cope?" What you will not hear in reply is the mention of the transcendent, loving God who we worship. That God is strangely absent from the lips of the suffering and the mourning. Our faith is directed inward. It is directed toward a military poised for retaliation. It is directed to the heroic, but inadequate response of rescuers. It is directed toward the investigative arm of the FBI and CIA. Friends, now is the time for the transcendent. Now is the time for us to accept into our lives that missing piece that we have knocked off the table.
God, our refuge.
I want you for a moment to consider the words of the psalmist in Psalm 11:1-3 (NIV). "In the LORD I take refuge. How then can you say to me: Flee like a bird to your mountain. For look, the wicked bend their bows; they set their arrows against the strings to shoot from the shadows at the upright in heart. When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?"
Consider the terror this psalmist is enduring. He is being told to flee for his life because his enemy shoots at him out of the shadows. He is being told to flee in fear because the righteous are utterly helpless. The same is true for both us and the psalmist. If within us we find nothing over us, then we succumb to all that is around us. We are to be pitied above all men.
But look carefully. For the psalmist there is something within that is transcendent and he responds to the uncertainties of life with utter confidence. Psalm 11:4-7 (NIV) says, "The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD is on his heavenly throne. He observes the sons of men; his eyes examine them. The LORD examines the righteous, but the wicked and those who love violence his soul hates. On the wicked he will rain fiery coals and burning sulfur; a scorching wind will be their lot. For the LORD is righteous, he loves justice; upright men will see his face."
The missing piece, the final word, is not found inward, but rather upward. Our foundations of faith are not built on the shifting sands of human effort. They are established upon the Lord in his holy temple. These terrorists may have awakened a sleeping giant. They may very well have stirred the vengeance of the most mighty nation on this earth. But they have first stirred the wrath of a holy God who is in his temple. They first have stirred the wrath of a holy God who loves justice and who allows the upright to see his face. This is a holy God who will rain fiery coals and burning sulfur on all who love violence. These men can hide in the mountains but they cannot hide from a holy God.
Or consider for a moment Psalm 46 (NIV). "God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire. 'Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.' The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress."
When all sense of certainty and security and hope seems lost, we only need to look up. For when we look up, there we will find a God who transcends this moment. God is our refuge. God is our strength. God is an ever-present help who redeems us from the rubble and destruction of life. He is our hope. He is our security. He is our peace of mind. He is focal point of our existence and faith.
This past week I was fascinated at the measures that were taken prior to this disaster. The World Trade Center towers were each designed to sustain a crash from a 707 jetliner. They were designed to withstand fires and hurricane-force winds. The section of the Pentagon destroyed in the attack had recently been remodeled. Steel cables reinforced outer walls. Shatter-resistant windows along with teflon-coated walls promised to fend off Oklahoma City sized blasts. Reinforced structures promised to prevent collapse and save lives. But none of these state of the art manmade buildings provided a safe refuge.XXXXXXXX
Friends, there is only one refuge. There is only one God in whom we can take refuge. And as you look within if you find nothing over you then you will be brought to your knees and succumb to the uncertainties of this life in fear. But if within your heart you discover by faith that God is your refuge, that God is your shelter, that he is over you, then you have a impenetrable, enduring hope that cannot be shaken or taken from you.
Years ago P.T. Forsyth had it right. "If within us, we find nothing over us, we succumb to what is around us."
This morning is God over you? Is God your refuge? Is he your Lord and Savior? Have you found that missing piece? Do you know the almighty, holy, transcendent, loving God, Jesus Christ? Or has heaven and the transcendent God been eclipsed in your heart by faith in self? Nourish you faith in God. For you will never be disappointed in him.