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An American Looks Back at 9/11
An American Looks Back at 9/11
The day was 9/10/2001 and I had just arrived in New York City. The flight from Dallas took longer than usual due to some setbacks at the surrounding airports. It was a dicey ordeal as our pilot said that we are 30 minutes away from being able to land with only 15 minutes worth of fuel left. It was scary for sure but I knew that I could pray and ask God to give me peace.
I closed my eyes and asked God to give me peace and I saw a fire that was burning in a circle and a few second after I said God, please show me what this means, I will see a fire, there is a fire, I will tell people about the fire of hell? The pilot came back on the overhead speaker and said, “We can’t land at the airport because there is a fire at the airport so we will circle the city until we are cleared to land at the other airport in the city.”
God had my attention at that point and boy did I ever need that peace that I was asking for. Not knowing then, but I believe now that was part of the plan for 9/11 to see how things would go when planes were not going to be able to land as scheduled.
As I arrived later that day to the home where I was going to be living on Staten Island I became aware that my mission in New York City while preparing to go to Nigeria in just a few weeks, was going to be full of surprises because of what I could never imagined would have happened to America.
I had learned how to use the bus and subway system back in July and so I was up early and ready to catch the bus to go to the harbor and get on the fairy and ride across the Hudson River to take my tour of the World Trad Center.
I don’t want to ever have to go through something like that again. Yes, there were many stories of people who were headed into the office at the World Trade Centers that day that were turned back by forgetting their keys, or a sick child kept them home or a car that wouldn’t start which delayed them long enough that they didn’t arrive on time which saved their lives. Those are the kind of stories we need to hang on to.
In July, earlier that year I had visited NYC to see where I would be living and to meet the church family that I would be working with. It was a busy time and so the opportunity to tour the World Trade Center just didn’t happen but I knew I would be returning to NYC soon so I left that sightseeing for then.
Fast forward to 9/11 just two months later and I find my first morning in NYC an exciting one at the prospect of going to see the World Trade Center first thing in the morning because I knew I would be busy working with the church and preparing to go to Nigeria.
I had learned how to use the bus and subway system back in July and so I was up early and ready to catch the bus to go to the harbor and get on the fairy and ride across the Hudson River to take my tour of the World Trad Center.
That morning I was excited also to go and meet up with a few people that I had met at the Staten Island McDonalds in July. These people went there every morning for breakfast and when I told them I was coming back in a few months they told me that would be right there and sure enough, they were.
It was fun visiting with them but when it came time to catch the bus to the fairy one gentleman had gotten out to the bus before me and I was coming around the back of the bus when he stuck his head out the door and yell, “Hey, we just hear on the radio that a plane just flew into the side of one of the World Trade Center buildings.” I responded with shock and the thought of I guess I’m changing my plans for the day.
Once I got on the bus he told me that I would be able to go tomorrow because it’s not that unusual for a crop duster to hit the tall buildings in NYC. To me it didn’t seem like that would be a one day delay type of event but he was the New Yorker who knew things.
Well, of course we know that it was way more than a crop duster plane. Instead of going into the city I stopped a few blocks up the road and got off the bus and walked a few blocks to the pastor’s home of whom I was working for. I told them what I had been told and so they quickly tried to find the news on TV.
Well, of course we know that it was way more than a crop duster plane. Instead of going into the city I stopped a few blocks up the road and got off the bus and walked a few blocks to the pastor’s home of whom I was working for. I told them what I had been told and so they quickly tried to find the news on TV.
There was no local news at the time because all of the TV stations for the area had their antennas on the top of the World Trade Center buildings. We were unable to find any news other than on a Spanish station and no one in the house spoke Spanish but we didn’t need to hear the words, we could see what was happing from the pictures.
It was an awful time to be in NYC. That evening as I tried to find my way back to the home where I was staying I found myself walking the whole way. Along my path I ran into hundreds of people who had walked across the big bridges from the city into Staten Island, much much farther than I had walked or had to go.
It was an awful time to be in NYC. That evening as I tried to find my way back to the home where I was staying I found myself walking the whole way. Along my path I ran into hundreds of people who had walked across the big bridges from the city into Staten Island, much much farther than I had walked or had to go.
They all had expressions of being distraught, exhausted, and they were all covered from head to toe in ash from the buildings having fallen. They looked like walking full bodied ghosts. Everyone of them that I spoke to asked if I knew how they could get home. I was obviously helpless in the matter only telling them I will be praying for them.
As the days went on and the streets and stores were beginning to open up after they were closed while authorities were chasing down reports of terrorists in various places it became apparent that the innocence of America had reached a new level of disbelief that this could happen to us.
A week had passed of which I had spent every day going into the city to see how I could help or just pray for people. The pastor that I was working with would ask me to meet him at certain places and to have a “pop up” prayer service. We ministered to lots of people on the streets during that time, I sang and he presented the Gospel and we prayed.
The very hardest part for me, that honestly changed me somehow, and I’m not even sure if I could explain how it changed me, good or bad, I don’t think so but it just changed me somehow, was seeing the family and friends of those who had loved ones that were at work in the WTC buildings on the 11th. They all stood on the street corners of every street in the city holding signs and taping signs to light posts and windows and anywhere they could of pictures of their loved ones. All of the pictures had the persons name and birthdate, address, and what office in the towers that they worked in and they all said last seen on 9/11.
By this time there was nothing left of the buildings and we all knew that those who had not returned home at this point had died trapped in the buildings. These sign holders would grab you by your clothes and arms and shove those posters in your face begging through tears asking if you had seen that person.
Their desperation was astoundingly devastating because you knew that there was nothing on earth that you could do to help them find their loved one or convince them that they were not alive. You didn’t want to convince them of that and I guess we all had hope that maybe there would be a soap opera ending where the person would be found in a hospital and just had amnesia and couldn’t remember how to get home or what their phone number was or their name.
It was the most pitiful, helpless feeling that I had experience in life and as a missionary my heart bled for them because I was not able to speak out at that time about the hope that we have and could all have in Christ. These people were just unable to take in any information except that which they sought at that moment which no one had.
Daily, all day long, up to 20 to 30 each day, there were funeral processions for the firemen that were lost. All the regalia and circumstance was beautiful and ugly all at the same time with a hovering sadness and shock and anger that followed the line of people walking to the services for these heroes.
Daily, all day long, up to 20 to 30 each day, there were funeral processions for the firemen that were lost. All the regalia and circumstance was beautiful and ugly all at the same time with a hovering sadness and shock and anger that followed the line of people walking to the services for these heroes.
Daily as I rode back and forth from Staten Island into the city on the fairy, past Lady Liberty I saw firemen covered in ash and those barely looking rested enough to even be walking stood facing where the mighty towers had once stood, in a trance of what was most likely not just disbelief but dissociation of what they were living through.
I reached out as much as I was able to and I would tell these men and women thank you and that I was praying for them and that God loved them and offer them a bottle of water as I tried to carry a few for just that purpose and almost everyone of them reached out to hug me, and kiss me on the cheek, ashes and all. The people in NYC felt very lonely and disconnected and just needed to know that others saw them and were praying for them.
I don’t want to ever have to go through something like that again. Yes, there were many stories of people who were headed into the office at the World Trade Centers that day that were turned back by forgetting their keys, or a sick child kept them home or a car that wouldn’t start which delayed them long enough that they didn’t arrive on time which saved their lives. Those are the kind of stories we need to hang on to.
What I noticed the most of all was the hurting and wondering that people were going through. Without hope in Christ hard times are difficult to get through, even when you have hope in Christ hard times are hard times. On this level of the 9/11 devastation, it was and it is a time of reckoning with ourselves of what would happen to us if we were to die.
These thoughts led me to come to a reckoning within my self and I found myself wanting to know why I had been disobedient to the simple command of ‘go out and make disciples’, which also means just sharing The Good News of Salvation through Christ with people. I found myself thinking back to every time when I was in Fort Worth Texas putting gas in my car and I felt led to speak to the person also getting gas next to me about Christ that I didn’t speak to.
I often shared with others and I didn’t lay out the whole gospel to them but I would simply ask them how their day was going, if they are from the area, and if they attend a church anywhere and if they said no or that they haven’t been in a long time then I would invite them to the church service where I attended. I had moved to Ft Worth to go to Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to learn to be a missionary. It was the whole reason that I was in Ft Worth getting gas in the first place and it was in my life plan to tell people about Jesus but I didn’t always do that. For whatever reasons that we give ourselves not to share Jesus with others, I had those reason and most likely plenty more.
It was when I saw on the news during 9/11 that people were jumping from the towers to escapes the heat that I began to wonder if I had asked that one person at the gas station to come and visit my church and they came and got saved, would they had known someone who knew someone who was jumping from the towers? Did I miss an opportunity to change someone’s life?
It was when I saw on the news during 9/11 that people were jumping from the towers to escapes the heat that I began to wonder if I had asked that one person at the gas station to come and visit my church and they came and got saved, would they had known someone who knew someone who was jumping from the towers? Did I miss an opportunity to change someone’s life?
Well, I know that the chances of getting a message from the gas station to the Twin Towers was very far fetched but it didn’t matter, my goal was not the person who was in the Twin Towers, my goal was the person right in front of me no matter how they got in front of me. I had simply not done my job.
Realizing this I took some time one day while I was waiting on the fairy to arrive at the Staten Island station which was right next to the minor league baseball field where I was sitting on a rock looking out at the Statue of Liberty wondering if she were a human person, what would she have seen and thought about that horrible day. I had many thoughts about 9/11 and the days following up to that point and I want to share what I wrote that day to inspire you to share this with others, or to rededicate your life to God or find out what it means to be saved and how to become saved.
At the end of October, I returned to Texas as travel to almost everywhere was cancelled but I did make it to Nigeria a few years later where I served as a Missionary.
As I sit on the shore side at the Minor League Baseball Stadium on Staten Island listening to the lapping waves of the Hudson River and trying not to sniff the faint fish odor, I look out across the water into the foggy haze at only an outline of the city. Without the World Trade Center buildings looming high above the concrete jungle, from this point of view the city seems dwarfed somehow, even more so today in the haze.
Lady Liberty is tiny from here, not that she’s all that big to begin with. What I notice about her is that her face in some small semblance of fate is turned so that only her peripheral view can see that remaining rubble of those destroying moments.
I think that it is fitting that she didn’t have to watch it happen and that only a glimpse of that day was caught by her.
That is how America one day will see it, as only a glimpse, like so many other history making events that have taken place in the course of our nation’s life.
We will not spend needless hours of watching and waiting, but we will see it only as a glimpse of our past. We will know that it happened but we must remain standing, like Lady Liberty, to say that life goes on and we stand up for great things!
The haze of this day is a reminder that the memory of 9-11-01 will, even though it is hard to imagine, one day be only a hazy memory.
Don’t get me wrong, this day for some will never weaver in brightness or rather I should say darkness especially if you were in the World Trade Centers or the Pentagon or one of the cites where these things took place.
For the vastness of the rest of us though we are all connected in that we were alive, American, and watching the news. We will realize that this to shall fade from our direct sight and focus.
In no way do I intend to down play this most horrible tragedy but in all ways I do intend to remind everyone that there is something bigger than all this, and that something is a someone. God!
God loves you and He loved and cared about each one of those lost lives from that day, and yes, even the men who carried out the horrible task.
I don’t want to discuss the issues of if this was God’s plan or the devil’s plan except that there are a few Scriptures that we can look at to see what part belonged to whom.
If you see this as an act of God to wake us up or if you see it as an act of the devil to destroy us, either way there is only one way to turn and that is up toward God.
An American Looks Back at 9/11
Written 9/17/2001 by Amy Hosp
Lady Liberty is tiny from here, not that she’s all that big to begin with. What I notice about her is that her face in some small semblance of fate is turned so that only her peripheral view can see that remaining rubble of those destroying moments.
I think that it is fitting that she didn’t have to watch it happen and that only a glimpse of that day was caught by her.
That is how America one day will see it, as only a glimpse, like so many other history making events that have taken place in the course of our nation’s life.
We will not spend needless hours of watching and waiting, but we will see it only as a glimpse of our past. We will know that it happened but we must remain standing, like Lady Liberty, to say that life goes on and we stand up for great things!
The haze of this day is a reminder that the memory of 9-11-01 will, even though it is hard to imagine, one day be only a hazy memory.
Don’t get me wrong, this day for some will never weaver in brightness or rather I should say darkness especially if you were in the World Trade Centers or the Pentagon or one of the cites where these things took place.
For the vastness of the rest of us though we are all connected in that we were alive, American, and watching the news. We will realize that this to shall fade from our direct sight and focus.
In no way do I intend to down play this most horrible tragedy but in all ways I do intend to remind everyone that there is something bigger than all this, and that something is a someone. God!
God loves you and He loved and cared about each one of those lost lives from that day, and yes, even the men who carried out the horrible task.
I don’t want to discuss the issues of if this was God’s plan or the devil’s plan except that there are a few Scriptures that we can look at to see what part belonged to whom.
If you see this as an act of God to wake us up or if you see it as an act of the devil to destroy us, either way there is only one way to turn and that is up toward God.
A quote from the book Desiring God by John Piper helped me see clearly how I should view this event. The quote says, “How can God be happy and decree calamity?
(Still quoting Desiring God by John Piper) “Consider that he has the capacity to view the world through two lenses. Through the narrow one He is grieved and angered at sin and pain. Through the wide one He sees evil in relation to its eternal purposes.”
(Still quoting Desiring God by John Piper) “Reality is like a mosaic. The parts may be ugly in themselves, but the whole is beautiful.”
(Still quoting Desiring God by John Piper) “Consider that he has the capacity to view the world through two lenses. Through the narrow one He is grieved and angered at sin and pain. Through the wide one He sees evil in relation to its eternal purposes.”
(Still quoting Desiring God by John Piper) “Reality is like a mosaic. The parts may be ugly in themselves, but the whole is beautiful.”
Also quoted Desiring God by John Piper, “If God reigns as sovereign over the world, then the evil of the world is not outside His design.”
Amos 3:6 “Does evil befall a city, unless the Lord has done it?”
This may sound harsh and like it is an action from an unloving God but please, I encourage you to take some time and search the Scriptures to see that God’s plan will not cease no matter how painful it may be for us. In the end He always follows His plan.
Here are a few verses that I found that will help explain how God is in control of situations such as 9/11.
Here are a few verses that I found that will help explain how God is in control of situations such as 9/11.
Lamentations 2:11 “My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within, my heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed,
because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.”
Lamentations 3:37-38 “Who can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that
both calamities and good things come.?”
Revelation 17:17 “For God has put it into their hearts to accomplish His purpose by agreeing to give the beast their power to rule, until God’s words are fulfilled.”
I know that this next statement of mine may be hard to take but it is true. The fact that thousands of those lost that day were just that, lost, unsaved and did not believe in Jesus Christ as their personal Savior.
If they were lost, they will spend an eternity in hell separated from the God.
I think about the pictures that I saw on the news where the people on the floors above where the airplane hit the towers were hanging out of the windows trying to escape the intense heat from the fire that the airplane fuel ignited and I wondered if those people were unsaved, lost, and were going to be entering into a fire much hotter of which they can never escape, that is the eternally burning fires of hell.
We can’t say that God was mean or unloving for taking them this way knowing so many would go to hell, but the fact of the matter is that none of us knows which day will be our last.
Friend, I urge you with all that is within me to ask Jesus Christ to come into your heart and ask Him to forgive you for your sins and to save you so that when you die you will spend eternity in heaven with Him.
We all need to be saved because we all have sinned, ever person who has lived past the age of understanding right from wrong has sinned.
The Bible says this about finding salvation in Jesus Christ:
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
Our sin has separated us from God and when we die without asking for forgiveness, our sin will cause us to forever be separated from God, that separation from God is death and that death will cost us everything we have and we can never have enough money or do enough good or nice things to buy our way out of that death that separates us from God and heaven.
Hold on though because The Good News is that God has given us a free gift to take to be able to be connected to Him.
Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
How and why did God give us this gift?
John 3:16 “ For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
God loved us from the beginning and He showed us His love by giving us His son. Even though Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, three days later he rose from the dead and is now in heaven praying for you and waiting for you to receive Him as your personal savior and you do this by believing that He did die and that He did raise up from the grave.
Is there anywhere in the Bible that we can see if there is a situation that is like what we go through today? There is and we see it when Jesus was talking to Martha whose brother had died. She felt hopeless and sad, much like we do today when someone we know dies, often we think about where we will go when we die. Jesus wanted to tell Martha The Good News so he asked her this:
John 11:25-27 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.
The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” “Yes, Lord,”
she replied, “I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world.”
Why did God give His only Son to die for us so that we will have life? God did this because he loved us first before we even knew who He was.
Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
What right does this give you?
John 1:12 “Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.”
When you believe in the name of Jesus Christ and believe that He died to make the payment for your sins, then you become a child of God.
You see satan intends for us to be destroyed and he wants to do everything he can in our lives to keep you from knowing what it is to be a child of God, satan is like a thief that comes and steals from you, but God has a better plan.
John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy, I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”
Jesus is asking you now to let Him into your heart and allow Him to become the Lord of your life to save you from an eternity in hell.
Revelation 3:20 “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him and he with me.”
If you want to become a child of God and to be saved by believing in the name of Jesus Christ then you can pray this prayer:
God, I ask you now to come into my life and forgive me of my sins. I repent from all of my past sins and I want to be saved. I believe in the name of Jesus Christ who died on a cross for me and is now raised from the dead and is in heaven with you. I too want to spend my life and eternity as your child. Thank you, God, for coming into my heart and saving me today. In Jesus name I pray, Amen!
Make the decision today to accept Christ and if you already know Jesus as your personal Savior than please tell those around you about Him.
If you prayed this pray today or if you prayed this type of pray in the past but you have not been living your life as a child of God, growing in the Word of God and becoming more like Christ everyday then I encourage you to call your local church and tell them that you have decided to ask Jesus to be your personal savior and that you want to learn how to live your new life in Jesus.
Looking to Him,
Amy Hosp
http://www.thetriumphalentryamystheory.com
