Sunday, September 23, 2001
|
Sunday, September 23, 2001 |
|
When you think you can't do 'anything' pray By MARY JANE HOLT
I am an American. Actually, I am many things, but above and beyond all else, I suppose I am a God-fearing American. I use God-fearing with the understanding that fear means I have some degree of understanding of where I, and my country, would be without God. With such a declaration I am not saying I am afraid of God, I only fear where I would be without His love, grace, mercy, guidance without His interactive Presence in my life and in the lives and hearts of those who lead my country. I am also a wife, mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, friend, and I was a practicing nurse until 1986 when I started writing. In recent hours and days I have longed to do something to help those affected by the destruction that has occurred in New York and Washington and beyond. I have wanted, ached, longed, even cried to do something. Not "anything," but something. And so I have prayed. In times past I would have thought that prayer would be too small a thing to do. I would have been convinced that some action on my part had to occur in order for me to feel like I'm doing something. But yesterday, I recalled once more "This Present Darkness," a book I read a decade or so ago, by Frank Peretti, a former Catholic priest. In writing about the ever-raging battles between good and evil, the author quite successfully drove home the point that many battles are won, and lost, in, through, and by prayer. He never said that actual fighting or real visible battles do not or should not, occur. He just said, in the end, that prayer is the key to real victory. So, I take some comfort in knowing as I pray that I am doing something. Not "anything." But something. And then as the daze, the shock, starts to lift at this 48 hour time line, I remember that I also write and so I am sitting before my keyboard, seeking to release some of the pain that rumbles and roars around in my head and heart. It is misery that prayer does not seem to erase. On September 12, as I listened to the doctors and paramedics lament the fact that there were no patients, "no patients to help," my heart broke. I am, of course, referring to those on the scene in lower Manhattan where the World Trade Center and companion buildings collapsed and were still collapsing. They spoke of how they are trained to help, how they had come to help patients, people, individuals who lay hidden from them, beyond their help, in the rubble. My heart continues to ache for these tireless emergency workers who never give up. Then shortly thereafter, I realized September 11 was 9-11. 911... But my mind did not stop there. I suddenly realized the first plane to hit the first building was Flight 11 and I wondered if it had been programmed by some deranged mind to strike around 9 a.m. Again 911. And then the calls began to go out. All the 911 calls. Actually, the 911 calls had started going out, before the first impact, from the passengers on the planes themselves. 911. To no avail. What kind of evil could be behind such atrocity? Once more I prayed. Constantly I pray. And I sing softly under my breath. To myself. To any lost or wandering soul that can hear me. What song do I sing? "To God be the glory, great things He hath done." And I am amazed that those are the words which constantly emanate from my lips, my heart, my soul. Where do they come from? How can they be appropriate just now? No sane man or woman would credit God with what we witnessed on the morning of 9-11-01. For that moment in time, evil ruled, or thought it did. On the other hand, any believer, and perhaps many previous unbelievers, may be tempted to credit God with what has happened since. After all, we Americans are a people who boast that we are "one nation, under God, indivisible." At this time in our lives we are at least being reminded that our forefathers had the wherewithal to make that claim. From the polls on which we have come to depend far more than we profess to depend on a true and all-knowing God we learn that we are indeed becoming "one" again. Under God? That remains to be seen.
|
||