The Divine Crash

September 2001, I had only just begun my freshman year at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.  On September 11, I had just woken up and turned on the news in time to see, live, the second plane crash into the World Trade Center.  The news reporter, Robin Meade of CNN, had just started her new job as a news anchor she said “That was on purpose and the United States appears to be under attack.” My heart sank and I felt a cold chill down my neck.  Shortly thereafter the plane crashed in Shanksville and my phone starts ringing off the hook because all the news said was “plane crashed outside of Pennsylvania.”  I remember walking around campus looking up at the silence in the sky because the all planes were ordered grounded by the president.

More than all of that I remember Sunday, September 16.  The first Sunday after September 11.  I remember going to church, not because I went every Sunday but because that Sunday I needed church.  I remember going because I needed to hear comfort in a world that had been turned upside down.  That Sunday I remember church being packed, everyone around me seemed to be yearning to hear from and about God.

Isn’t this the way it works for us even today?  When things are good and normal we go about our lives as if nothing could hurt us.  Then when someone sneaks in and destroys our comfort-bubble, that is when we want God that is when we want to be close to God and yet as soon as things are good again we begin to ignore God again.  We move away and pretend nothing ever happened and that we don’t need God anymore.

Why do we do that?  If I only talked to my wife when something was wrong, then something would be wrong all the time.  A marriage is built not just on hard times but on the good moments shared between two people.  Why would God be any different?

Or maybe no one else does that, maybe it is just me who treats God like a magical rescuing genie in a bottle.  Maybe I’m the only one who asks God to save me from my troubles and when God does it I pretend it was all me and God didn’t do anything.

“Dear God, when things are bad may I call to you.  When things are great may I call to you.  When you answer my prayers may I give you credit. May I unleash you from the bottle and let you loose on my life.” – Amen

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Pastoral Life by RevBT