“Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth.” (James 5:17)
“We are mortals just like you, and we bring you good news….” (Acts 14:15)
I am ten kilometers over Greenland, winging my way from Amsterdam to Minneapolis following 3 1/2 weeks “on the road.” A few days ago I participated in the dedication of the Open Door Medical Clinic, our newly constructed family practice teaching clinic in Bucharest, Romania. A few days earlier I was involved in meetings with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Kenya, in Nairobi. And a few days before that – two weeks ago today, as I pen these words – I witnessed the world changing beneath my feet. So did you. September 11, 2001: things will never be the same.
Commentators from New York to Nairobi and Boston to Bucharest agree: in one fateful day, the entire world has changed. We lost our collective innocence that day. New alliances in a new international “war” were defined that day. New suspicions, even new hatreds, were born that day. Horrific new images were seared forever into our collective imaginations on that horrible day.
Much has changed. Yet very much more remains the same. I am impressed in particular that individual efforts, still, can make an absolute difference – as we have learned from the breath-taking heroism that must have taken place on UA 93, crashed in Shanksville, PA…short of its intended target. On that flight brave individuals foiled a murderous terrorist plot, losing their own lives in the process. They were, it seems, ordinary citizens – “mortals like you” – pressed into extraordinary service. And on September 11 they accomplished more than the FBI and the CIA put together.
What if the cockpit were contested today, on my own flight, here above Greenland? I wonder: Would I find the courage to step into the fray? Would I resolve to contribute my own life, if need be? These are the things I think about at 10,000 meters.
In one way, of course, the “cockpit” is contested. All around our world and in innumerable small ways, a moral and spiritual “cockpit” is contested day-by-day. It is contested in human hearts and human societies. On the one hand, pride, hedonism, prejudice, self-serving greed, etc., would take control. On the other hand, Jesus would enter as pilot-in-chief. There is catastrophe awaiting the first alternative. But with Jesus there is salvation.
What has not changed in these tumultuous days is that individuals may yet hope to make a difference. Not only to stem dramatic catastrophe in extreme situations. But also to sow the seeds of a better, alternative world: by fervent prayer, by patient love, by deeds of justice and mercy, and by Gospel words of Calvary’s grace. This is a contest that is about life and death, in the end. But who will step into the fray? Am I willing? Are you?