“Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others.” 1 Corinthians 10:24
I was sitting in my ivory tower corner office on the forty-fourth floor of a downtown Dallas skyscraper where I served as manager of a regional bond trading operation for a major Wall Street investment firm when I first heard that a plane had hit one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center. How sad, I thought, imagining some small aircraft whose pilot had wandered off course, then accidentally clipped its wings against the building and crashed. Moments later, though, I stepped out of my office onto the trading floor where I happened to glance up at the large screen TV mounted on the wall just as a second giant airliner intentionally slammed itself head-on into the second tower.
Like me, most everyone I suppose who was older than toddler age back on September 11, 2001 remembers in great detail exactly where they were and what they were doing when they learned – or perhaps witnessed – about the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. Some have referred to that event as our generation’s Pearl Harbor and have compared the firemen and other heroic first responders to those brave souls who sacrificed their lives on the beaches of Normandy on D-day.
Those were for sure evil acts we had witnessed that day, visited upon thousands of innocent victims, our fellow citizens, in our own country, on our own soil, specifically New York and our nation’s capital. . . . Then, before we could even begin to process what we had just witnessed, the most amazing thing happened, again before our very eyes, as waves of courageous first responders as well as ordinary citizens who happened to be nearby instinctively began to lay their lives on the line to save others, many losing their lives in the process, evil being overcome by good. “Nobody should seek his own good, but the good of others,” the Apostle Paul wrote. Those words were written on the hearts of millions across our nation that day and continued to be for weeks and months to come.
I still have faith that in the long-run, goodness wins out over evil, that love wins out over hate. We are God’s children after all, and because of that God works in all things for good. Not that evil isn’t prevalent in a fallen world, but God is able to redeem every circumstance for our long-term good. May we ever remember 9/11 as the sacred day that it is, when the goodness of God along with His faithful people prevailed over evil.