Did God Stand Atop the World Trade Center?
Some in America seemed to believe,
For when those twin monuments to prosperity crumpled to dust and ashes,
So many asked, “Where is God in all this?”
He momentarily disappeared in that holocaust – from many a heart,
Awakening us from our American dream into an Islamic terrorist nightmare.
“Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest?” Asks God.
Only with that twin collapse did we imagine His pedestal there,
We didn’t question His presence before they were gone.
Unusual God who rests His feet by having them nailed to the cross.
Extol the Lord our God and worship at His footstool, for it is holy.
The dual sign of global dominance became sacred ground zero by blood.
The smell of money transfigured to the smell of death –
What it was to those who hated us, they converted it to for their enemies.
Such an enormous sacrificial offering to bring us to our senses, or to God’s?
Where was God when His made in USA foot rest was reduced to ruble?
Was He too buried beneath the ruins, or consumed in the inferno –
As so many felt in their hearts? So many dreams deferred.
Like two giant arms, those towers (two not just one!) pointed to the heavens.
Were they our Babels of arrogance, our delusion of access to power?
Our disparaging cry to the world, “Our name is Ozymandias,
Look on our works you mighty and despair!”
Or perhaps they were our Jerusalem temple –
Comforting us as a sign of God’s almighty and vigilant presence.
Or just the pinnacle from which Satan could tempt the Son of Man?
God resides with the humble of heart not atop our success and prosperity.
We live and move and have our being in Him. We cannot flee His presence.
Nor can evil create the place where He is not.
Did God Stand Atop the World Trade Center?
Yes. And in it and around it and beneath it.
Absorbing the blows of hatred in order to give life to His world.
And aglow with the light of hope in clouds of dark destruction and death
Christ is with us even to the end of the world, or of an era or of our dreams.
He still stands where we cannot.
Fraternized 