" T h e A f t e r n o o n o f 9 / 1 1 / 2 0 0 1 "
I saw this coming a long time ago. I knew this was going to happen.
And then when I saw the first plane hit, and then another, it all came rushing back.
I heard the explosions and the screams and I watched the cataclysm of horror unfolding as in slow motion, played back again and again in all too graphic detail.
Remember when we were talking at the bagel shop, about how the enemy always overplays his hand because he can not control his lust to steal, kill and destroy? You even said, "we need to figure out what he's going after next". (This was in response to a conversation I was having with Jason Upton about Satan and his activity.)
If I had told you what he was "going after", you probably wouldn't have believed me. Plus, I couldn't tell you anyway, because I know you, and I know that if you had believed me, you would have tried to do something to prevent it.
No William . . . it had to happen.
And since then, I've overheard people say, "How could a loving God let this happen?"
The very thing that allowed Satan to convince those people to crash those planes full of innocent people into buildings full of innocent people, is the same thing that allows those people to ask such an asinine question.
That thing is called "free will".
And free will is the greatest gift ever born from a love that - as long as people's minds and hearts are bound to Earth in earthen vessels - they cannot fully understand. Their definition of love is so terribly distorted. It is an utter perversion - the giddy feelings of infatuation, or the heady lusts of the flesh, or the unrealistic romantic fantasies fostered by filmmakers and storytellers.
True love - the love born of a "loving God" (as they so often and so eloquently put it) - is the kind of love that can not be understood by a finite mind attempting to contend with an infinite one.
And they ask, "What kind of God could allow this to happen?"
The same "kind of God" that was bound to stand by and let a ravenous mob murder His only Son. (Who, by the way, was more innocent than all of the "innocent" victims.)
I see the agonized convulsions of bitter sorrow. I see the river of tears. I taste them upon my own lips.
I see the young wife with a baby growing within her realizing that her husband will not ever be coming home. He will not be there to see their child born.
I see the young man trying to come to grips with the fact that his close and tender friendship with his older brother is over with.
I see the gaping whole left in a little girl's life where her father used to be.
I see a mother - now too old to have any more children - desperately trying to say goodbye to her only daughter.
But take just one of these excruciatingly painful experiences and multiply it by about three thousand, and you'll just then begin to understand how I feel.
So when people blame me, it hurts more than I can say.
Signed,
God
PS - I could have caught those planes and set them down safely. I also could have lifted my Son off the cross . . . but I didn't. I know it's hard to understand. And I know it's hard to say it, but aren't you glad?
