September 11, 2023

September 11, 2023.

It has been 22 years since the attacks on the world trade center happened.
When it happened, I was 22 years old.
It is crazy to think there was a baby being born that day who is now as old as I was when it happened.

I had been married for one month.
We lived in Elgin, Illinois and it was my second day at my first real job.
I was a designer for a small marketing agency called Fineline Marketing.
I walked into the office after driving to work and everyone was more confused than anything.
"Hey, someone crashed a plane into a skyscraper in New York City," someone said.
I thought they meant a tiny 2 person aircraft and the pilot was drunk or something.
The internet was not as big as it is now, so the news came slower, and we didn't have TVs in the office. "Wait, it may have been on purpose," someone else said.

We could play the radio through the phone system at our little office, so we had WGN playing over the tiny speakers. I went and looked outside, everything seemed normal.
I remember it being sunny and calm outside of Chicago.
Dogs were barking, cars were driving, the sun was shining...
but nothing would ever be the same.

I felt the same as COVID started to rear it's head in March of 2020.
The world was going crazy, but when I looked out my window the wind was still blowing, the birds still sang and time kept going.
I feel the same now as my wife and I go through her battle with cancer.
There is a storm going on, but the sun still shines.

It is two realities happening at the same time.

As I was writing this, I didn't know where to go next.
I stopped and prayed, "God, where are you taking this?"
I got up and walked around the house, Mandy has been reading some books about grief.
She left one for me to read by Philip Yancy called Disappointment with God, I flipped through and see a bunch of my wife's pink underlines and I land on one that says, "The world as it is versus the world as it ought to be..."

Yeah, that.
Two realities at the same time.
Birds chirping and the sun shining in the time of battle and war.

I kept reading in the book and he writes, "We tend to think, 'Life should be fair because God is fair.' But God is not life. And if I confuse God with the physical reality of life—by expecting constant good health, for example, then I set myself up for a crashing disappointment. God's existence, even his love for me, does not depend on my good health...if we develop a relationship with God apart from our life circumstance then we may be able to hang on when the physical reality breaks down. We can learn to trust God despite all the unfairness of life."

Wow.

September 11 wasn't fair.
COVID wasn't fair.
Cancer isn't fair.
Life is not fair.
No one is exempt from the unfairness of Life.
Jesus sure wasn't.

But this is where Creation comes in.
God is a creator, a creator making new things out of old things, and he is molding and shaping this world into a new Heaven and a new Earth where things like September 11, COVID and Cancer don't happen.

And He is also in the process of creating a new you.
Just because you were born doesn't mean he is done creating you.

In the midst of life's unfairness our job is the difficult road of faith that he is molding and shaping you into the amazing creation he has in mind.

As we remember this horrible event that happened 22 years ago know this:
This isn't how it is supposed to be, but this isn't how it will always be because God is creating something new, and we can join him as we create new things today.

Go and create something amazing today.