A reflective visit to Ground Zero and what should follow
A late-afternoon visit to Ground Zero brings the facts of September 11 into sharp focus and exposes how quickly routines can dull grief. The reflection turns to what the church might become if tragedy consistently pointed people to God. The piece closes with a sober reminder of what lasts in a world marked by heartbreak.
- The simple recorded facts of 9/11 can still break through emotional reserve.
- “Life goes on,” but the church’s response after tragedy reveals what endures.
- Support gospel work in hard places, remembering what ultimately lasts.
By Mark A. Taylor
At Ground Zero
I had not expected to be moved when I went to Ground Zero.
I did not get to the site of the World Trade Center till this year long after the debris was removed, long after the bent and burnt girders were gone. Now little is left there except a cavernous hole, as large as several city blocks, surrounded by chain link.
But we were in New York City, and my wife and I decided we wanted to see it. So we arrived via subway late in the afternoon, amid a crowd of briefcase carrying office workers eager to get home but slowed by sightseers like us gawking through the fence.
The commuters looked straight ahead, ignoring the void in the skyline and the tourists who came to see it. I wondered when they learned to be nonchalant about a national tragedy we’re still remembering four years later. Meanwhile, Asian visitors poked camera lenses through fence openings or photographed the mounted signs describing what happened on September 11, 2001.
I took no pictures, but I did read the signs. What had the government decided to say about the horror that happened at this place? The few paragraphs stated the specifics simply, listing the flight numbers and departure times of the hijacked aircraft, recalling the exact moment each plane hit its mark in New York or Washington or crashed in Pennsylvania, recording the time when each tower fell, mentioning the unprecedented FAA decision that day to pull all planes from the skies, calculating the numbers of lives lost.
Without hyperbole or rhetoric, the simple facts penetrated my reserve. My throat tightened as I reflected on how much we lost that day not only thousands of lives, not only a symbolic landmark, but also the sense that we were somehow invulnerable and in control. “Life will never be the same.” Never was a truism truer.
Life Goes On
But in the urban hustle surrounding me I thought of another cliché: “Life goes on.”
It must, of course. We could not let the terrorists undo us.
A Call After 9/11
But wouldn’t it be wonderful if our worship services were as crowded today as they were just after the terrorist attacks? Wouldn’t it be great if this tragedy, like so many before it, became a catalyst for pointing people to God? Wouldn’t we rejoice if the 9/11 aftermath were a generation committed to the love and justice of the One who came to save us from hatred and despair?
Some are trying. As we’ve reported before and again this week, church planters have gone to Manhattan to take the good news to 9/11 neighborhoods. We should support them, but that’s not all. We also should remember that this world is Satan’s domain—where heartbreak is common, where death happens every day, where everything we build will eventually crumble. As an old song says, “Only what’s done for Christ will last.” In the wake of 9/11, could anything seem more certain?
Author: Mark A. Taylor
Mark A. Taylor, who served as Christian Standard editor from 2003 to 2017, retired in June 2017 after almost 41 years with Standard Publishing (Christian Standard Media).
