9/11
- Mira
- Sep 11
- 6 min read
September 11, 2001. The day that literally changed our entire world forever.
If you're like me, even though you may not remember the day that the planes slammed into the World Trade center, you've probably grown up hearing about it. In history class, from your parents, grandparents, and anyone else old enough to remember exactly where they were when the deadly crash took place.
Last year, my family went on vacation to Washington DC, and on the way, we stopped at Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the Flight 93 memorial there. At first glance, it doesn't look like much, only a field with a wall running around it.
Inside the museum, however, cases line the walls, filled with details and mementos from the brave men and women who gave up their lives to stop the plane from crashing into the Capitol. Footage of the collapse of the twin towers plays on repeat, and recordings of calls made from the passengers of the plane to their families can be heard through the museum's sound system.
When you pick up the model phone and press the receiver to your ear, a woman's tear-filled voice fills the silence, begging for her husband to answer the phone. When he doesn't pick up, she leaves a message telling him that she might not make it home, and that she loves him. There's a tiny click, a moment's pause, and then the next recording plays, this time a young woman trying to reach her sister.
And by the time you finish listening to them all, the weight of grief and the precious loss of their lives is overwhelming.
Reading about the people who did the unimaginable and brought the plane down on their own is sobering. From Tod Beamer (the "leader" of the group), a Christian man with a family, traveling to a work trip in California, to Laura Grandcolas, a pregnant young writer, the courage of the passengers is both beautiful and strangely sorrowful. Their horrific deaths left a hole in their families for years to come.
And so the phrase Never Forget is applied to them, the men and women immortalized in recordings in a visitors' center.
The hijackers of the four 9/11 planes were Muslims, belonging to a terrorist group called al-Qaeda. The recording of the cockpit from flight 93 documents their panic and decision to crash the plane to end the lives of the passengers. Moments before the plane plummeted to the ground, the leader of the hijackers shouted, "Allah is the Greatest!"
Hundreds of years ago, before the Muslim faith had been developed by Mohummad, another man stood under the stars and proclaimed his God to be the Greatest.
Abraham was elderly, and he had no son to carry on his name and inherit his possessions. He had been prompted to leave his homeland by the God who bent forward to the earth to make a covenant with him.
God didn't make a covenant with Abraham on a whim. For years, earth had been groaning, plagued with sin and death, tortured by the suffering the first man, Adam, had wrought upon the world. In His infinite grace, the Lord began to carefully stitch the frayed fabric of the world back together, and one day bring it back to the perfection He'd designed it to be.
He chose to do this through the Messiah: The Savior of the World.
The Messiah was Christ, the second person of the Godhead, God himself wrapped in human frailty. The only man who could live a perfect life and lay himself down as a spotless, unblemished sacrifice, providing a way for all men to be made righteous.
That night, God choose Abraham to be the line through which the Messiah would be born: He promised Abraham a son. And Abraham believed Him.
That is, Abraham believed Him until it wasn't happening on the timeline he chose.
After waiting impatiently, Abraham decided to listen to his wife's suggestion and take matters into his own hands. He slept with a slave woman and conceived a son through her; a boy he would call Ishmael.
I know what you're all thinking. Why am I scribbling about an old Jewish man in an article about 9/11?
Because, dear reader, the descendants of Ishmael would be known as the Arabs.
And the Arabs? Well, they're where we get Islam. In other words, the hijackers on the 9/11 planes could trace their lineage back to Ishmael, the son born from Abraham's impatience and disobedience.
When Abraham made the choice to go against what God had planned for him, the consequences of his actions caused pain and hardship for his family. But it wasn't just his family that would feel the effects of the consequences.
History never takes place in a vacuum, which is to say that one event will always affect another event.
If Abraham had waited for the Lord's fulfillment of His promise, Islam never would have been developed. And 9/11 never would have occurred. The hundreds of souls lost in the crashes would still be with their families.
Disobedience never affects just one person- it affects people you may not even see.
But in His grace and goodness, God doesn't just end the story there.
It's true that the Arabs never would have existed. But it's also true that our God is a masterful craftsman. He turns the tables we flip, paints the beauty we split, and redeems gloriously what we destroy (the first two metaphors are from 'Sticks and Stones' by Kings Kaleidoscope, a song that I find especially timely for this thought!).
Joseph's proclamation of "What you meant for evil, God meant for good!" applies in every situation, even this one, no matter how filled with pain and tragedy it may be.
Nabeel Qureshi grew up a zealous Muslim. As a young man, persistently challenged by his Christian best friend, he opened up a few books by Christian authors. The more he read, the more he felt out of place, until he finally prayed for God to reveal Himself to him. Finally, by God's grace, he accepted Christ and abandoned Islam.
Later, he began a ministry to spread the gospel to Muslims and became an influential speaker and author. Although sadly, his life was claimed by cancer in 2017, his ministry was far-reaching and impacted hundreds for Christ.
And he's not the only one. Stories of Muslim converts to Christianity, desperate for the life and salvation that Allah can't give them, are not as rare as one would think.
Without the birth of Ishmael, the world would be spared tragedy and suffering.
But then we would never get to see the brilliance and radiance of our God at work.
He is not hindered by our actions. Instead, when we turn away and run the race of rebellion, God uses it to further His wonderful plan of redemption for the entire world.
We serve an awesome and magnificent God, one who is beyond all praise. We are unable to count His ways, for they truly are numerous and beyond our understanding.
I had this blog post typed up and edited almost a week before when I planned to post it. But today (September 10th), when I got home from work, my dad tearfully explained to me that Charlie Kirk was tragically shot and killed at a political event this afternoon.
Charlie Kirk was a young, political activist who supported the current president and advocated for the rights of the youth in America. He was an outspoken Christian, proclaiming that Christ was King, and that "It's all about Jesus" multiple times on his social media pages.
With his death, he left behind his wife and two young children.
It is at times like these when darkness presses in even closer, and we feel isolated.
But God is the same in all circumstances, and just like in 9/11, His kindness and love for us will shine through. His ways are not our ways, and His plan is not ours. His ultimate plan of redemption has a higher goal than what we can see.
And so we keep moving forward, trusting that our God will not let us fall, and that He orchestrated these events for our good and His glory.
"The Enemy's best efforts to blacken the world would only serve to scatter the Light like stars in the Heavens." -Andrew Peterson
Even in tragedy, God is not taken by surprise. And His perfect plan always has a wonderful and glorious conclusion, one that should make us cry out His praise endlessly.
What a loving and wonderful God we call Father!
Until next time, stay undistracted and keep an open heart. ♥
Love,
-Mira
Resources:
(To read more about Flight 93 and Shanksville, click below!)
(Nabeel Qureshi's testimony is absolutely gorgeous. To read more, check out his book "Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus" in addition to the article below.) An Intellectual and Spiritual Journey from Islam to Christianity
(A look at Charlie Kirk's life and the tragic shooting that took place yesterday. The article is slanted leftwards, but gives a good explanation of his life and faith.)
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