The Day After And the Day After This

It was going to be a beautiful day.  Every person remembers how vastly blue the sky was that day.

And I thought about that in snatches yesterday.  Nineteen years since 9/11.  What are the things we remember about that day?  Where were we when we found out what happened?  How did we respond?  Even the little details are still vivid.  I remember canning a garden full of ripe red tomatoes still warm from the sun that afternoon, because it just needed to be done.  And because I just needed to be doing something.

I realize that college freshmen this year were not even born yet.  9/11 is ancient history to them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We took some of our grandkids to the zoo yesterday.  9/11 is not even history to them yet.  People strolled around the zoo, looking at the amazing designs of God's creation.  And it appeared by all accounts, this September 11 was just another day.

September 12, though, should continually remind us of God's faithfulness.  He brought us through that crisis.  And He will bring us through this one and the next and the next.

"Trust Me in this."

It is our daily trusting God that brings us there, on the ordinary days in the ordinary ways, that we learn to turn from despair and worry and anxiety and make trusting God our default.  To sing a little louder in the dark shadows and momentary afflictions and when the road turns another way.  To understand the magnitude of the ordinary days which are not so insignificant at all.  To learn by heart a new song of His faithfulness. To know that.

To trust Him even in this.

That morning nineteen years ago, even before I knew what was going to happen that day, I read in the devotional My Utmost for His Highest:  "If we do not do the running in the little ways, we shall do nothing in the crisis." 

I read it, underlined it, sent the girls off to school, and went for a run on a beautiful morning with a sky so blue there still are not the words to describe it.  And when I returned from my run, my mom called.  She did not even say hello.  "Turn on your tv.  You obviously don't know what is happening."

It was no longer an ordinary day with an extraordinary blue sky.

But it was on September 12, the day after and the day after that, we saw what trusting God was all about.  Every day, even in mystery, even in the bleakness, God was still there.  Every day is a story of His faithfulness.  We can hold that reality fast, because He holds us fast.

God is still bringing us through.  God is still here.  Even six months into the pandemic.  Even in this mystery.

Today, tomorrow, and the day after that.  God is faithful.

 

When I am afraid,

I put my trust in You.

In God,

   whose Word I praise,

in God I trust.

I shall not be afraid.

               Psalm 56. 3-4