When the Towers Fell

It took 99 days to extinguish the fires.

Last week we marked the 25th anniversary of 9/11. My parents' generation remembers where they were when John F. Kennedy was killed. I vaguely remember the Challenger exploding on television. But for Generation X and many millennials, 9/11 is the event in American history most seared into our minds. If you are under 25, you were not alive.

Some remember Regis Philbin, mid-broadcast, realizing something was going on. Some remember every airplane in the country being grounded, or boats of every kind ferrying people off Manhattan to escape. Some remember George Bush being told what had happened while sitting in a room full of second graders, and a few days later standing on the rubble with a bullhorn, speaking to the workers clearing debris. And later we would learn of Wheaton grad Todd Beamer and the passengers of Flight 93, who stormed the cockpit and brought the plane down in a Pennsylvania field rather than let it reach Washington.

I was hiking Whiteface Mountain in the Adirondacks with the LIFT discipleship program. The person who told me what had happened later enlisted in the Navy. Standing next to him was our friend Eric, who was later called up by the Marines and killed in Afghanistan. We drove down from our hike to the McDonald's in Lake Placid and watched the small TV in the corner. I tried to call my parents in DC on a pay phone, but the phone lines were down. My dad had worked at the Pentagon. I got a message from my mom the next day: "We are fine."

We were. Nobody in our house died. And yet nothing was fine, and everyone knew it.

The Sunday after, churches across the country were full. Gallup measured a jump in attendance that September. By November it was back to where it had been. Six weeks. That was the length of our collective fear.

Jesus was once told about a massacre. Pilate had killed Galileans in the middle of their worship. The crowd wanted him to explain it. Instead, he brought up a second tragedy on his own: "those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them." A tower fell. People died. And Jesus asked whether they were more guilty than everyone else in Jerusalem. “Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” (Luke 13:4-5).

He refused the question we all ask: "Why them?" He replaced it with the question we all avoid: What about you? A falling tower is not a message about the people under it. It is a message to the people watching. Your life is not as secure as it feels. Your time is shorter than it looks. Turn now.

For six weeks in 2001, America felt that. And then, we didn’t.

The towers fell to say at least one thing to the rest of us. Repent, and live.