God vs 9-11

Anyone ever have those days where your struck by the absolute fragility of human life?  With all these 9-11 specials on TV, anticipating the ten year anniversary, I find myself meditating on this.

Ten years ago I was a student at the Fashion Institute in NYC, I lived on Long Island and commuted three days a week into Manhattan.  On September 11, 2001, I started my day with a stop at 7-Eleven to grab some coffee, then hit the Long Island Expressway for my two hour drive into the city.  I was just about to head into the Mid-Town Tunnel when the song broke on the radio and the news cut in that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center.  Initially it was thought that it was an accident, so I called my Mom and kept driving.  We talked about how impossible it was for that to be an accident and that maybe I should turn around before I get into the city.  Just as we spoke the words the second plane hit.  I pulled a U-turn and sped home as fast as I could with the image of the smoking towers in my rear view mirror.  I watched the rest unfold on TV, from the safety and comfort of my childhood home.

So one of the specials I watched was on PBS, regarding how 9-11 affected peoples faith.  Some saying they had to turn to God because nothing else could make them feel better or explain where their loved one went after such a violent death.  One woman's mother died in the towers and she just couldn't imagine that, that was it for her wonderful, loving, kind and amazing mother... so she turned to God.  Then others argued, "if their is a God he must be very indifferent."  Or that there could be no God if things like this happen.  I understood and had compassion for all sides of the argument. 

Another tragedy is all the volunteers who felt compelled to help clean-up, dig up bodies, and just generally get lower Manhattan back up and running.  These guys are all dying now, they all have so many cancers and other illnesses from the chemicals, ash, and residue they breathed in on Ground Zero.  Some have died already, and some have been given a few years.  So where is God? 

I wish I had amazing answers to these questions and accusations against God... but I am not that wise.  What I believe is that we live in a world under the attack of evil and if we allow these evil things, done by evil people, to pull us away from God, then evil wins.  We are constantly fighting this battle, even when it's: do I read my Bible or watch Jersey Shore (you can't tell me Jersey Shore isn't evil)?  God is good, he wants good for us and he can make good out of bad - of course this is easy for me to say sitting in my house watching things unfold on TV.  But I have been through my valleys before, and in my experience, God has never forsaken me.  He always leaves me better than I was before.

One of the many reasons I know there is a God, is the presence of evil.  I think most people can agree that there is evil in this world.  So for me, if there is evil then there has to be good.  God is good.