BY WILLIAM G. JOHNSSON

Sunrise, Sunset
"The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises" (Eccl. 1:5, NIV).

We made it through a year. That is the best that can be said for the past 12 months.

It's been one of those times that come to us individually and societally when all we know to do is to get up and go out to meet another day. To see the sun come up and fall turn to winter, and winter merge into spring, and spring give way to summer.

Here we are again: summer on the wane and September in our faces and the infamous date 9/11 before our eyes. The pain, the terror, and the bewilderment come surging back. Those wounds that we thought were healing hang raw and red still.

"Some days a profound sorrow
so burdens the heart
song finds no space within to dwell;
and one, accustomed to praise,
can voice no melody.

God understands.
He remembers a time when all heaven was silent,
each choir voice stilled
as the Father's heart endured Calvary."
-Alyce Pickett

The Fourth of July was more subdued this year. Leaders of government warned that al-Qaeda might seize the day to strike again, and installed security checks and hidden cameras on the famous Mall in Washington, D.C., where the multitudes gather to celebrate.

In Pennsylvania people put on red, white, or blue T-shirts and formed a huge living Stars and Stripes by the field where United Airlines Flight 93 smashed into the earth one year ago.

In New York the recovery operations at ground zero have long been over. On May 30, down in the 70-foot-deep crater where the World Trade Center once stood, firefighters and police snapped to attention for the playing of taps and the mournful roll of drums as their comrades carried out the last stretcher-empty, except for the neatly folded Stars and Stripes. More than half the 2,823 dead remain unaccounted for.

No speeches, no voiced prayers. Only the sounds of a mournful bagpiped "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and a defiant "America the Beautiful" accompanying the weary but proud procession of thousands of searchers, firefighters, police officers, relatives, and city officials.

Retired firefighters formed the honor guard in the World Trade Center crater as the last stretcher, the empty stretcher, passed by. They had searched the rubble for their firefighting sons; many found nothing. Grim-faced John Vigiano, a man of some legend during his 36-year career with the fire department, lost two sons on September 11, his only children.*

Consuelo Velasquez was invited to the ceremony but could not bring herself to attend. She lost her husband, Jorge, in the south tower of the World Trade Center. Jorge worked in security for Morgan Stanley, with an office on the forty-fourth floor. He stayed by his post until the end. Of the 700 or so Morgan Stanley employees on 25 floors, all but seven made it to safety.

Mrs. Velasquez showed me a photograph taken about 10 minutes before the collapse of the south tower. Jorge stands with eyes closed, next to his boss shouting into a bullhorn, and another security officer. Someone, before the building came down, snapped the scene and hand-delivered it to Consuelo (see p. 19).

Jorge Velasquez was a good man, a loving husband and father, and a faithful Seventh-day Adventist. He ran a feeding program from his own van for more than 400 people in Manhattan every Sabbath. On the fateful morning he had not felt like going to work, and Consuelo urged him to take the day off. But he said, "My boss has a death in the family; he needs me today," and went to his work-and death.

In a service in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, Jorge was honored and called a hero. Later the governor of Wyoming invited Consuelo to another memorial service.

Jorge Velasquez was a hero.

So is Consuelo Velasquez.

For two weeks she walked the streets of the devastated city with her sister and son, going from hospital to hospital, scanning the lists. For three days the security firm kept assuring her that Jorge and his boss had escaped from the south tower. Then a message appeared on the Internet that Jorge was injured but alive. Consuelo hoped against hope.

Hope turned to dread, and dread at last to grim resignation. No remains, no closure. In June Consuelo received a letter requesting her to identify some small body parts, but they proved not to be Jorge's.

How does one find the strength to get up and face the dawn? One day at a time. Sunrise, sunset.

Consuelo's four children kept to themselves, withdrew. Eighteen-year-old Ramon found it hard to sleep. And always the question Why? hung over the family.

"If I didn't have the promises of God, I wouldn't know what to do," Consuelo says. "I keep telling Ramon the Lord is coming. And Ramon says, 'Yes, and I'm going to ask the Lord why.'"

Promises, prayer, hope-and work. This close-knit family, members of the Passaic Seventh-day Adventist Church in New Jersey, plan to carry on the ministry to the homeless started by Jorge. "I feel the coming of the Lord is very near," says Consuelo. "We must tell others about Him."

Rebuilding the Wall
"The street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublesome times" (Dan. 9:25, NKJV).

If the perpetrators of the 9/11 madness thought that the United States would be thrown into panic, they must have been confounded. Within 24 hours the nation had stiffened and rallied, thrust aside political differences, and united in fierce determination to meet the challenge of a hidden, insidious foe.

In late October I ran again in the Marine Corps Marathon. For some time this annual event was uncertain because of security concerns over the 20,000 runners and hundreds of thousands of onlookers. But the organizers decided to go ahead; and we ran-ran in T-shirts proclaiming freedom, ran as one, ran in defiance of those who would take away our way of life.

Ran sadly: the course took us around the Pentagon and close to the gaping hole from 9/11. I was surprised at how deep the hole was, seemingly deeper than wide. Many runners paused to look; some took snapshots.

The hole is gone now. Crews working around the clock closed the gap and restored the Pentagon ahead of schedule-the anniversary of 9/11.

In New York City the 16 acres of the World Trade Center site have long been cleared. By May 30 the 1.8 million tons of debris had been removed in 100,000 truckloads. The smoking, twisted ruins are gone: the site is down to bedrock. In the official symbolic ceremony marking the end of the recovery operation the last steel beam of the twin towers was cut down and laid on a flatbed truck beneath a black shroud, a wreath of red roses, and an American flag.

Now New York tries to figure out what to do with the site: how to remember the dead but also revive this part of the city.

New York is rebuilding. America is rebuilding. People everywhere who were shocked and saddened by the horror of 9/11 are rebuilding.

We are rebuilding in troubled times.

I arrive at Baltimore-Washington International Airport and confront a security line stretching out of sight. It takes me one hour and 20 minutes from the time I join the check-in line to the departure gate.

Returning home from an overseas assignment, the authorities at the Frankfurt, Germany, airport require me and the other passengers to remove jackets, belts, wallets, watches, and shoes, and submit to a body check with an electronic wand.

Troublesome times: 9/11 changed everything. We know now what we sensed that day-life will never be the same again.

Suddenly history divides between pre-9/11 and post-9/11. It's only a year, but it seems like a lifetime. The mind has a way of leveling and selecting, but the days prior to 9/11 already seem like the age of innocence. We were like the inhabitants of Laish described in the book of Judges, a people "living in safety,. . . unsuspecting and secure. And since their land lacked nothing, they were prosperous." They were "a peaceful and unsuspecting people" and fell quickly before the sudden attack of the invader (Judges 18:7, 27, 28, NIV).

We are learning to live with the threat of terror. It's one thing to fight a war against a named enemy from a defined geographical region with the prospect of a reasonably fast conclusion; it's altogether another matter to do battle with a shadowy foe, scattered throughout scores of countries, who relies on surprise, cunning, and unexpected weapons in a conflict with no terminus in sight.

The recurring terror alerts from government leaders depress and drain our spirits. The seemingly endless parade of doom scenarios-"dirty" bombs that contaminate with radio-active fallout; biological weapons spreading anthrax, smallpox, or who knows what; cyberspace used to turn dams and power grids into weapons of mass destruction and chaos-suck out our energies, joy, and peace of mind.

America is suffering a major anxiety attack, and millions of people in other countries suffer with her. Compounding the effects of the age of terror introduced by 9/11 is the meltdown in the corporate world.

The collapse of WorldCom wiped out nearly $160 billion in investor holdings. But it was only one in a series of scandals: Enron, Arthur Andersen, Dynegy, Tyco International, Global Crossing, Rite Aid, Adelphia Cable, ImClone Systems. No wonder the stock market took a nosedive. The litany of corporate and executive corruption grows broader and deeper by the day.

Jesus described the end-times in language that eerily parallels our day: "On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity. . . . Men will faint from terror, apprehensive at what is coming on the world" (Luke 21:25, 26, NIV).

Troubled times indeed!

At Such a Time
"When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near" (Luke 21:28, NIV).

The July 1, 2002, issue of Time featured a remarkable cover story, "The Bible and the Apocalypse: Why More Americans Are Reading and Talking About the End of the World." Writer Nancy Gibbs reported that since 9/11, 35 percent of Americans say they are paying closer attention to news events and how they relate to the coming end of the world, and that 17 percent believe the end of the world will happen in their lifetime!

In this nine-page treatment focusing on the book of Revelation, Seventh-day Adventists are not mentioned-even though we have been proclaiming the end of the world for 150 years and opening up the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. Instead Time focuses on the Left Behind series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. The nine volumes have sold more than 36 million copies in various editions, with the ninth one heading the list of best-selling novels in 2001.

The eschatology portrayed in these books is, from an Adventist perspective, wild and fantastic. It involves the bodily "rapture" of Christ's followers from this earth, a seven-year period of disaster called the "tribulation," and the reign and eventual defeat of an evil figure, Antichrist, in the battle of Armageddon. These teachings are not new: they derive from a preacher named John Nelson Darby in the nineteenth century. What is new is the casting of Darby's eschatology into fictional stories with characters, lurid plots, and horror scenarios.

We Seventh-day Adventists well could feel upstaged by these widely popular books. We have been preempted, thrust aside without even a mention, by Time. At such a time as this, what should be our message and how should we live?

Let's work for God's glory and the salvation of lost people. This is no time to hide, no time to withdraw, no time to be engrossed in money-grubbing, carousing, and dissipation. "Occupy till I come," Jesus tells us (Luke 19:13)-that is, keep at your post and do your job until I come for you.

It's still true: there is a heaven to win and a hell to shun. Tell everyone. Tell your neighbor. Tell them about Jesus, your best friend.

We are building, building in troubled times. And these times will get worse. "The work which the church has failed to do in a time of peace and prosperity she will have to do in a terrible crisis under most discouraging, forbidding circumstances" (Testimonies, vol. 5, p. 463).

But praise God, the work will be done. God guarantees its success. He will complete it, wrap it up in righteousness. He is the Lord of space and time, the Lord of the church. And Lord of our lives, if we allow Him to be. We are safe in those hands that were nailed to the cross for us. Good news? The very best-one year along from 9/11, and every day until Jesus comes again.

*Information about the May 30 ceremony in New York is drawn from the Washington Post, May 31, 2002.

_________________________
William G. Johnsson is the editor of the Adventist Review.