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Metaphorically speaking, towers have crumbled several times in my 73 years. Pearl Harbor was one of those events. So were the deaths of Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy. Although it’s a long lost blip on most people’s radar screens, to me North Korea’s invasion of South Korea in June, 1950, was a crumbling tower. When I was drafted into the Army in February, 1951, I thought I had signed my own death warrant. The Cuban missile crisis shook the foundations of my life, too.

I survived all of them, and yet I pray with deep concern for my children and grandchildren, for whom the disaster on September 11, 2001, will stand as their first crumbling tower. They will have to learn that God is our only refuge and strength, our only hope in times of trouble.

Those of us who have been graced by the Lord to speak his word to others know that truth has two sides, theoretical and experiential. We speak his truth to bring guidance to others, and suddenly we need to apply it to our own circumstances. Last summer I preached on four monstrous “storms” encountered by people in Jesus’ day (Mark 4:35-5:43): the violent windstorm on the lake; Legion and his horde of demons; the woman’s incurable illness; and the dead daughter of Jairus.

While I watched the horrendous collapse of the World Trade Center towers-with knots in my stomach-I preached my sermon to myself. I had said that in each storm, Jesus brings relief, healing, composure and wholeness. Could I reach out and touch him while New York City’s proud towers crumbled to dust?

I had to.

I reflected on my country’s pride and my own, my country’s security and my own. When towers crumble, not only are they reduced to rubble and dust, but so are we. We feel like sitting on dust and ashes, like Job, to confess our own unworthiness and idolatry. To think how my security has been shattered, and my life stripped to its essentials, is unnerving. I have to reshape my thinking toward what it should have been all along. God alone is my high tower; his kingdom alone is unshakable. Anything else is highly vulnerable, despite my country’s incredible wealth and power.

I confessed thinking that my life must surely be more valuable to God than that of an HIV-stricken Ugandan, or of a garbage picker on the dumps of Cairo. Am I not more important to God than a miserable homeless, starving refugee from the Congo? I must be better in his sight than the Taliban in Afghanistan, or the Muslim rebels in the Philippines. How could I compare the loss of thousands in New York City with the losses of millions of Russians, European Jews and Chinese in my lifetime?

Even when we serve God on lifesaving missions, we serve with remnants of Jonah’s religious and nationalistic superiority. Crumbling towers-like Jonah’s dying shade bush-tell us who we really are in God’s sight. All flesh is as grass.

But that is not the end of the story. Out of hopeless and despair we must seize the incomparable magnificence of Christ’s resurrection and return. Crumbling towers direct us to him in heaven and to his restoration of peace and justice. Jesus pointed to Jerusalem’s glorious temple and said its towers would crumble. Be on your toes, he said, and be ready for my coming.

We must seize the moment to live Jesus in our lives and encourage others to do the same. Whatever our missionary contexts, we know that our God reigns. The cross of Christ towers over the wrecks of time.

October 12, 2001