Comfort in prayer after 9-11

Tuesday’s terrorist attacks were a sharp reminder that in the end it isn’t buildings, possessions or position that matter as much as family, friends and fellowship.
Shortly after the first phone call alerted the quiet news office of a breaking story, my New Orleans family called to share their amazement after two planes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City and a third plane crashed into the Pentagon.
As the day wore on they called back to download their adrenaline flow, shock and speculations. They needed to go to the grocery store and buy milk and bread, but … it was so hard to settle into the ordinary on the day that planes became bombs to blow up buildings. My son came home early – his building, one of the high rise towers in New Orleans was evacuated. He went home past a blockaded, deserted Super Dome and turned on the television.
Because I was on assignment when my daughter called to talk, she called her dad instead. He listened with interest – he works in a business office with computer screens, not TV screens.
When my daughter and I caught up with each other, she said classes had been canceled at the small school she attends. Students huddled together in their dorms watching the unfolding events. My throat tightened when she said, “if war is declared … it will be people my age who are called to serve.” I do not like to consider revenge when I know it involves her friends, cousins and my nephews. Her campus held nightly prayer vigils in the campus chapel after the attacks.
Later I contacted my other sons and my father, who lives in the state (not the city) of New York. I just wanted to talk with them. I wanted the comfort of contact with the familiar.
Tuesday evening my husband and I heated a pizza from the freezer and
sat down to watch the perpetual news broadcasts. Sure it was repetitious. But in some respect I needed to repeatedly hear and see those images to chisel away at the shock which denied that the impossible had actually happened.
At quarter to seven I pulled myself away from the television set, handed my husband the remote control and cordless phone. I headed for the prayer meeting at Memorial Stadium.
He needed to catch up on everything he had missed during the day and wanted to hear the president speak to the country. I needed to spend some time speaking with the Heavenly Father about His crazy creatures. I needed the comfort of praying with others over common concerns.
At the stadium familiar faces greeted me and reminded me that events had disrupted the ordinary flow of life but it was not forever. We sat quietly mulling over our mutual concerns and prayers for the people of this country caught up in the devastation. At times we physically connected as we held hands in prayer – chains of people united in prayer. Together we sang old familiar hymns and prayed the Lord’s Prayer. I left knowing that as old as that prayer is, the Ancient of Days is older and has an eternal perspective on the horror of the day America was attacked.