It comes around every year, a date that once meant little to most, yet now, brings tragic memories of images burned into our collective psyche. That plane-shaped hole in the building, the dazed people weeping through a mask of ash, the broken skyline, the slice smoking in the Pentagon, the metal-strewn crater caused by courage, the heart-broken president with the bullhorn and the baseball.

The sadness lingers, and with it, a challenge. What is the antithesis to such senseless hate? To soldiers who murder in the name of religion? It isn’t foreign aid or war or education or inclusion. The opposite of man’s enacted wrath is Christ’s offered refuge. Our challenge in the face of 9-11 is to speak often of Jesus, the One who offers to all to come to Him, to find Him to be the Word, the Truth, the Way, the Light, the Living Water, the Bread, the Beginning and the End, the Shepherd, the Savior.

Psalm 37 

Fret not yourself because of evildoers;
    be not envious of wrongdoers!
² For they will soon fade like the grass
    and wither like the green herb.

³ Trust in the Lord, and do good;
    dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.^[b]
4 Delight yourself in the Lord,
    and he will give you the desires of your heart.

⁵ Commit your way to the Lord;
    trust in him, and he will act.
⁶ He will bring forth your righteousness as the light,
    and your justice as the noonday.

⁷ Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;
    fret not yourself over the one who prospers in his way,
    over the man who carries out evil devices!

⁸ Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!
    Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.
⁹ For the evildoers shall be cut off,
    but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.