Rev Charles Drew is pastor of Emmanuel Presbyterian Church in New York City. The morning after the 9/11 terrorist attack he sent a note to the church family, a portion of which follows:
I want to say something about trust and hate. First, think about trust. Psalm 46 reads, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea….Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts…. Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the nations …”
God does not change, and He is good. The greatest testimony to this is not what we tend to look to — the stability or ease of our present circumstances. It is rather the promise He kept at the cross to rescue us from sin and death. Some of our number are still unaccounted for. We have the hope with respect to them that not even the worst-case scenario is a match for God’s provision in Christ. We know that in the end God will wipe every tear from our eyes and make all things new. We know that our God will, in the end, bring every secret to light and right every wrong. Remember and preach these things to your-self. Take time to be still and know that He is God.
Now think about hate. Psalm 97:10 reads, “Let those who love the Lord hate evil.” We err if we think that to trust God is to be passive in the face of what has happened. Not only may we hate it, we must. The question, of course, is how. We must resist the terrorist tendency of our own hearts — the desire for quick and indiscriminate retaliation. God alone has the right to judge, for He alone is righteous and He alone sees all. So what, positively, do we do? We channel our deep hatred into deep works of love, understanding that the weapons we wield are spiritual and have great power.
Reflecting on this 10 years later he noted:
Life is full of 9/11s — events that are too big for us: a child dies; you lose your job; the bank forecloses on your house; you lose your savings; the person you intend to marry breaks the engagement. The way forward in such times is not to collapse in a heap. It is to do whatever the obedient thing is within your reach, however small…. They are the way, in the midst of crisis, that we tell ourselves and others that God does not change and that He loves us.