I was in US History, my second class of the day. We’d just been released from homeroom, the extended twenty-minutes at the end of first period (my Language & Composition class), when word began to spread that something had at happened at the World Trade Center (WTC) in Manhattan. By the time I got to my history classroom, I sat down quickly and pulled out my notebook for my third period class (Yearbook), because I had an assignment due that day that I hadn’t written yet. I remember needing to write something like 300 words about whether or not these new “cellular phone” things were going to become important in the way students accessed information and engaged with the world without them—within the next 45 minutes. “Oh good,” I thought. “We’re just watching the news. I can knock this out, easy.”
I looked up just in time to see the second plane hit.
Our school’s favorite administrator was a woman who had fled Cuba by some sorry excuse for a boat, because the law stood that if someone could make it to Floridian sands and touch U.S. soil, they’d come under the sovereignty and protection of the United States. Castro couldn’t touch them on our ground. Her son was in this history class. Many of us lived in that school district because our parents were U.S. military personnel serving at a nearby base. In this particular class, we’d had a number of conversations about the dignity and privilege of an adage like “land of the free, home of the brave.” I don’t remember any of us not believing in or appreciating the privilege of being U.S. citizens. Our families served the cause. Our neighbors risked sharks and storms to stand a chance at it.
Much has changed in twenty years (not the least of it, it seems, is public sentiment) and I find myself now staring down the barrel of the next twenty. I left my home country a half dozen years after the towers fell, and have been in the Middle East and Islamic world for the last decade. Nobody who knew me as a high school sophomore scrambling to meet a procrastinated deadline would’ve predicted that. Yet, twenty years after our first visceral, violent confrontation as a nation with the wickedness of jihad, I’m watching the skies, wondering how quickly they’ll turn red in the middle of the day.[1] I wonder often what was going on in the years before September 2001 that I was just oblivious to, too young to grasp the consequences of the “rage of the nations.”[2]
It’s been a long twenty years. Nobody can plead that kind of ignorance any more.
At the risk of offending Tolkien purists (of which I am not), there’s a conversation between Frodo and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings that I find increasingly pertinent:
Frodo: “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.”
Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
Maybe the era of white-picket-fence America ended on September 11, 2001. Maybe that dreadful day was but a signpost to us: don’t cling to what you can’t keep, but cleave to what you can’t lose.[3] But I am increasingly aware that if those of us who were alive and cognizant to see the second plane hit the South Tower do not recognize the generation we are in, we won’t prepare those born since 9/11 properly to live through the days ahead. We’re the thirty- and forty-somethings in our strength now; think back over the events that have seized the globe since. Who knows what will happen between now, on this 20th 9/11, and the 40th anniversary in another two decades, should the Lord tarry. But I know this: our kids will be the strong and able-bodied adults at that point. And that’s what we need godly vision, strategy, and discernment for: how to prepare Gen Z and Generation Alpha to stand on stable knees[4] in the days and decades ahead.
Scripture promises us that the One on the throne that cannot, and will not, budge will yet “shake everything that can be shaken.”[5] We are barreling towards the Day of the LORD, when the only thing—and the only One—left standing after the shakings is in plain sight of every eyeball everywhere.[6] This is the better, “blessed,” hope we are anchored by, the thing that’ll keep us from sinking or straying when things get heavy (or, heavier).[7]
As we reflect on the last twenty years, and remember the 2,977 lives lost on American soil the day we learned even our skies are not altogether safe, and the some-6,800+ U.S. soldiers (in addition to the thousands of coalition partners, allies, and Peshmerga, etc) who’ve died in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war against ISIS ever since, let us do so with open hands. The Son of Man is truly coming on the clouds in power and glory,[8] and He will end every war.[9] He will rebuild and restore, and usher in the day tears cease to fall and bodies cease to die.[10] He is our only surety. He is the joy set before us;[11] let us not only look for and wait for Him—let us partner with Him in all He is doing to get us there.[12]
Maranatha.
Stephanie Quick (@quicklikesand) is a writer/producer serving with FAI. She lives in the Golan Heights and cohosts The Better Beautiful podcast with Jeff Henderson. Browse her free music, films, and books in the FAI App and at stephaniequick.org.
[1] Matthew 16:1-4
[2] Psalm 2:1
[3] Matthew 16:25
[4] Hebrews 12:12
[5] Hebrews 12:25-28
[6] Revelation 1:7
[7] Titus 2:13; Hebrews 6:19
[8] Daniel 7:13-17; Matthew 24:30; Mark 13:26
[9] Psalm 46:9; Isaiah 2:2-4; 9:6-7
[10] Revelation 21:1-5
[11] Hebrews 12:1-2
[12] Matthew 24:14; 28:18-20
