A prayer for peace

Last Monday, the world remembered the condemnable suicide airplane crashes that claimed 2,823 lives in a savage attack that turned the magnificent Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City into rubble five years ago.

Two airplanes were commandeered by hijackers and then intentionally rammed into the Twin Towers at the southern tip of Manhattan, creating a wave of terror that has gripped peace-loving citizens all over the world with anxiety to this day.

Is anyone safe anywhere from conscienceless extremists with vile notions of transforming the world into a stage for violence?

If the world has become a dangerous place to live in, where can we go for refuge?

Terrorists couldn’t care less about the innocent. They strike with malicious intent. They thrive in sowing fear, dissension and hatred.

But there is one thing that terrorists will never be able to extinguish. The light of Christianity—faith in God, hope for peace, love for all.

Surely, the terrorists who masterminded the Sept. 11 attacks saw that despite the horrendous carnage caused by the airplane crashes, a church across the street from what is now known as ‘Ground Zero’ stood without a scratch.

Surely, they realized there was a message to fate sparing the church from harm—a message that terrorism will never kill the spirit of Christianity.

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Five blocks away from the World Trade Center, aircraft landing gear was found, hurled that distance by the force of United Airlines Flight 175 slamming into the South Tower.

Yet, in the wake of the scattering of debris, the tiny St. Paul’s Chapel was untouched.

The Episcopal chapel is part of the Trinity Church Parish and was built in 1766. It is the oldest public building in continuous use in New York City.

It had to be an act of God that left the chapel unscathed. Not one of its windows was broken and the Waterford chandeliers were intact. One of the giant sycamore trees in the chapel graveyard facing the World Trade Center was completely uprooted. The other trees withstood the impact of the holocaust, evidently shielding the chapel from flying objects.

Is there a logical explanation for the chapel surviving the terrorists’ rage? How could the chapel stand its ground when buildings surrounding it and some farther away were not spared from destruction?

The other day, US president George Bush and his wife Laura attended a service of prayer at the chapel to commemorate the tragedy of Sept. 11. It was a fitting visit to the chapel as a call to terrorists that whatever evil they do, the good will stand strong in faith, hope and love.

What the terrorists brought down was only a monument—something that can be rebuilt. What they will never be able to bring down is a spirit—something that is deep in the soul.

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Although the New York skyline was stripped of its most impressive monument to free enterprise, a firmer resolve to pray for peace and fight terrorism has emerged from the collapse of the World Trade Center.

The casualty count was a testament to the savagery of the dastardly attack—2,823 dead, 1,721 never found. Included in the death toll were 23 policemen, 37 port authority officers and 343 firefighters. The recovery work took some 3,100,000 hours over eight months using 108,44 trucks to remove more than l.6 million tons of debris and 190,568 tons of steel from an area equivalent to three football fields. The last fires were extinguished over three months after the attack.

Those who walk by "Ground Zero," a phrase coined in the 1940s during that decade’s unrestricted atomic and hydrogen bomb testing, are consoled by this message in a brochure that is given out to visitors: ‘We can accept God’s act of love, through Jesus, on our behalf, as our entryway to eternity with Him or ignore God’s intervention and spend our eternity without Him. Although thousands of people died, God bids us to consider the life available after death. Our world doesn’t always make sense. In a moment, we can experience tragedy and pain. Sometimes, great pain.

"But through faith, God has provided a way to live in a world of evil with peace and hope."

Sept. 11 is a reminder that every day should be a day of prayer for peace.