Twin cities in the City, in the sky, soaring to meet the clouds; greeting the sun with joy, gladly catching golden light that kindles answering golden light in glass and metal.
Rank upon rank of lights, gleaming in the night like strands of diamonds, carefully arranged in ordered rows by a proud master jeweler.
Humming with people, busy at their work; “Just work!” Perhaps, but careful, constant work kindles and keeps a dream’s light glowing in one’s heart, and in time gives it solid form. And dreams can kindle other dreams in other hearts, light answering to light, life after life made brighter.
Thus rose the mighty skyline all around, and thus the towers themselves; built by, and built for, dreamers, who could keep their dreams alight, and, as the metal, stone, and glass were thrown higher and ever higher into the sky, rejoice as they took shape.
Evil comes, killing a lovely morning, screaming out of the sky, flashing twin knives, unnatural weapons, filled with stolen lives. They strike. The wounded towers now bleed smoke and fangs of flame that race like hellish poison, tearing at their steel. Sadly the twins falter and fall, weeping tears of splintered glass and metal, floor smashing into floor, their strength and gladness crumbling into smoke and ruin as they plunge downward, taking with them lives; so many precious souls, that vanish, with their dreams, their strength and gladness, love, and tears, leaving lonely bits of paper flying in the gray, choking dust that rolls like waves of surging water down the streets, to whisper mournfully of those destroyed.
The skyline now is wounded; a gash of emptiness where once the towers stood echoes the wounds in hearts and lives.
But God still reigns; He steers all things to suit His purpose, even in this horror, and has promised to one day share that purpose with us, speaking face to face. He also is never neutral between fear and freedom, good and evil, and would have us fight evil with the last atom of our strength.
Take courage from the courage of all those:
Who fought the toxic smoke, the killing breath of the twin ravening, snarling infernos, to save all whom they could; who faced twin hells whose slashing fire-claws brought the towers thundering down, rather than leave a comrade.
Who wrenched another weapon from the hand of evil, choosing to face their own fiery death, rather than risk other lives.
Who deal with grief and horror day by day, sifting through each scrap of the twisted pile of wreckage, a long-smoldering mass grave, hoping to find some trace of those who died.
So may we truly honor the lives lost that day, in Pennsylvania, in the Pentagon, in the twin cities in the City, in the sky.
