This week marks the 25^th anniversary of one of the darkest days in our nation’s history—September 11, 2001. If you were alive then, do you remember where you were and what you were doing on that morning when you heard the news?

I was in my office that morning at Keith Memorial UMC in Athens, where I had just two weeks before started serving as the associate pastor, when one of the members popped his head in my office and asked if I’d heard about the airplane that crashed into the World Trade Center. This sounded nonsensical to me and I didn’t know quite what to make of it. But then, like many of you, I spent most of the rest of that day, and most of the days to come, in front of a television screen, trying to learn more about and make some sense of what we all were witnessing.

I also remember feeling relieved that I didn’t have to preach that next Sunday. How does one speak into a moment like that? Thankfully, my senior pastor, the Rev. Dr. Stella Roberts (who preached for me here at Signal Crest a few years ago) and I had already made up the preaching schedule, and since I had just preached my first sermon there a few days before, it would be her turn to preach on the Sunday after 9/11.

I well remember her scripture and her message. The scripture was Psalm 46, the first five verses of which are as follows:

¹God is our refuge and strength,
    a very present help in trouble.
² Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
    though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea,
³ though its waters roar and foam,
    though the mountains tremble with its tumult. 

⁴ There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
    the holy habitation of the Most High.
⁵ God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
    God will help it when the morning dawns.

With the poise and confidence of a seasoned pastor, Stella assured all of us who had been questioning where was God in the midst of this terror and tragedy that God was right there “in the midst of the city,” right there in the depth of the dust and debris, the wreckage and the rubble. God was right there in the hearts of the helpers, in the fire fighters and the first responders. God was not afar and aloof, but “a very present help in trouble” (v. 1).

Toward the end of that psalm, we find this well-known verse: “Be still, and know that I am God! I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth” (v. 10). Stella ended her message on that day inviting us all to simply be still, and to trust—to know deep down in our heart of hearts—that God is still God, and God is still with us, “the Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge” (v. 11). Therefore we will not fear.

It was hard not to be afraid back in those days. Sometimes it’s still hard for us not to fear. But the psalmist is resolute: because God is our refuge and strength, we will not fear. No matter what is happening in the world around us.

That message, it seems to me, has held up well after these twenty-five years. As we mark this grim anniversary, may we all remember, and hold onto, this fundamental affirmation of our faith, that “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear…”