mgpcpastor's blog

I submitted a reflection piece on 9/11 for our local newspaper, The Border Watch.
Here’s the text.

Some of us argued about whether the new century began on January 1 2000 or January 1 2001. But 11/9/2001 or 9/11 is the shorthand code that I think history will use to mark the commencement of the 21st century. The terrorist attacks on the United States will be long remembered, not simply because of their scale, but because they were largely captured on video for the world to watch.
The generation in which I grew up understood the World Trade Towers to symbolise the United States and their place in the world. Dominant, assertive and large. To awake one morning (having missed the late night reports of the day before) and find empty space in a skyline those structures had dominated scant hours before was confronting.
There was grief at the heart of the US military establishment, as the Pentagon also suffered an attack. The loss of life on a fourth plane, Flight 93 was made all the more poignant by the heroism of those who thwarted the plan to crash the plane at a specific target resulting in greater loss of life.
In those early days it seemed that history had turned some sort of corner, but there was uncertainty about what new direction loomed ahead. A decade later we have experienced Australia’s own loss due to the bombing in Bali, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, changes in government in Western democracies, and what has become known as the ‘Arab Spring’ during which various non-democratic governments in the middle-east have been either overthrown or assailed.
We live in uncertain times. And yet all times have had their uncertainties. Any student of history will know that governments have risen and fallen, with each generation determining that theirs is tumultuous. Many of us have grown up with memories of world war, depression, communist and nuclear threat, social upheaval, communism falling. Yet these we seem to remember as ‘the good old days’. The ‘old days’ were seldom as good as we remember them.
Perhaps our growing sense of unease has to do with a basic understanding that creating and perpetuating a perfectly just, equitable and peaceful society is beyond human capacity. Yet the more we see ourselves fail, the more we believe that achieving it is within our grasp. This is a larger reflection of our personal tendency to think that our own peace would be ensured if only we had satisfactory relationships, possessions, income, health or the like. We get them and find that satisfaction does not last.
Just as the events of 9/11 were not isolated from events which both preceded it and have flown from it, so our lives will not usually be rescued from one single event, but rather by a series of steps.
World peace, and personal peace, is as fragile as human desire. As if that will ever go away.
So, as a Christian, I remain committed to justice, democracy and the equity of persons. But as a Christian I place my trust in the one who is over all the powers of this world, and I place my faith upon the one who declared that his kingdom was not of this world. For there is everlasting peace in him alone.