Fifteen years

By Jeff Long

It is surprising that this day is not an official day of national observance. It is vital to be called to collective remembrance, no matter how much it hurts.

Fifteen years ago. Today's high-school students either were not alive yet or were too young to remember. Nineteen men. Four planes. America was changed irrevocably.

We were frozen like statues in front of our television sets in disbelief.

We didn't go in to work that day -- or if we did, we left early. If we stayed, very little got done.

At home, dishes were left unwashed. Clothes were left unlaundered. An entire nation's aircraft were grounded.

If you were in a plane in the air, it was ordered to land immediately. If you were scheduled to fly that day or even that week, you were stuck there.

It was a Tuesday that rendered the United States collectively slackjawed.

Before 9/11, terrorism always seemed to happen elsewhere and far away. After 9/11, Americans woke up to the reality it could happen anywhere.

It was one of those seminal moments.

You remember where you were when you learned of Pearl Harbor, of JFK's assassination, of the space shuttle Challenger's explosion at liftoff. And now this, burned into your consciousness as indelibly as a branding iron labels cattle.

A youth director in my employ at the time, senior to me by a number of years, who had lived all over the world, said that day, "America, welcome at last to the family of nations."

I didn't want to hear that. I did not want to face the knowledge America was not immune from terror.

Even now, when I know the truth, it is still extraordinarily difficult to accept.

Churches were full of people that night. Congregations sang, "O God, Our Help in Ages Past" and "God Bless America."

Pastors opened the doors on the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, and people streamed inside -- eager to be with their neighbors as together, we tried to make sense of the day's events.

I spoke that night in a church in west St. Louis County. A college friend, also a pastor, who was visiting us that week, also spoke.

I have no memory of what we said that night. I do recall that folks were unusually attentive.

The church had an overflow attendance the following Sunday. It was higher than average the Sunday after.

But three Sundays out from 9/11, the numbers had fallen back to their previous levels.

Pastors throughout the country almost without fail reported this same pattern in their own congregations.

A friend opined that the post-9/11 sudden rise and subsequent rapid decline in churchgoing was akin to finding your favorite teddy bear in the attic, the one that consoled you as a child, petting it a couple of times and then putting it back in cold storage.

When I think of 15 years ago, my mind does not go to the images of the towers falling in New York City.

I think of the people trapped in their offices, realizing there was no escape, frantically using their cellphones to reach loved ones a final time.

I think of the passengers who forced down the plane in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, not far from my hometown, who with a collective "Let's go" charged the cockpit and, at the cost of their own lives, denied the terrorists their prize.

What we remember of the past informs the present and gives us fuel to face the future.

The Old Testament is full of references to the Lord reminding people not to forget their shared history, to remember what he had done for them: "I am the Lord thy God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery" (Exodus 20:2).

I do not presume to tell you what to think about 9/11. I invite you to keep remembering and to recall who it is you ultimately trust.

Find that within yourself. Hold onto it on this terrible day of memory.