Let’s develop our prayer habit to be ready for the next 9/11

By Mark A. Taylor

Crisis often prompts prayer, a fact underscored by prevailing prayer after the 9/11 terror attacks and proven again by today’s impassioned social media prayer requests for Covid-19 victims.

September 2018: Two beams rose to the clouds from the World Trade Center site in New York City. Photo by Jesse Mills on Unsplash.

There was no social media 20 years ago, and we can only imagine what Twitter feeds and Instagram updates would have contained as the trauma of that terrible day unfolded. But, of course, we did have the church. And many congregations reported record attendance after the World Trade Center towers fell, the Pentagon burned, and heroes died at a fiery grave in the Pennsylvania countryside.

People were afraid, and fear is a natural prod for prayer. Some were mourning, and thoughts often turn to God when grief weighs heavy. Most of us were in shock. We felt helpless, maybe even overwhelmed. And so we prayed.

I was in a meeting at Standard Publishing when the planes hit the New York towers. A colleague interrupted us in my office. “Terrorists have taken planes, and they’re flying them into buildings,” he said. At first I thought he was joking. At an all-employee meeting that afternoon, we prayed and then scheduled a special drop-in prayer time in our library/meeting-room-turned-chapel during lunch hour later in the week.

Security was shattered

Life was changed for us because of the attacks, similar to how our persistent pandemic has upended our sense of security now. The nation’s psyche was battered and many enterprises were damaged, and it’s happening again today in the wake of Covid-19.

But the spike in prayer and church attendance 20 years ago did not last, and today in the U.S. we see less formal religious practice than ever.

In a way, it’s curious that this is true. In many respects, life in our world now is far more tenuous than it was 20 years ago. Oh, that the U.S. death toll from Covid could be limited to 9/11’s 3,000! Oh, that damage from infernos burning out of control around the world today could be contained inside parameters like those of the terrorists’ carnage! Oh, that hurricanes destroying villages, flooding subways, and eliminating small towns would not unleash far greater damage even than that caused by three exploding jetliners! Oh, that the terror born in Afghanistan could be eliminated by the decades of bloodshed there since then!

But despite a growing realization of our limited power to control, we go on. The world is reeling, but somehow we’re coping. We look to the government or meteorologists or medical professionals or career scientists to tell us what’s next. But their answers seldom truly satisfy. They may give us clues about tomorrow, but we need peace and purpose today.

One solution stands strong

The solution for both today and tomorrow is to pray. Yes, prayer brings comfort in the crisis, but it is in the ordinary day-to-day that prayer builds strength to withstand unexpected trauma.

Just as 9/11 firefighters were not responding to their first emergency, just as New Orleans levees survived Hurricane Ida because of careful construction, prayer helps us most when it is experienced long-term.

Too often we forget the crisis and move on without learning from it. More than 50 years ago, Joseph Bayly described this in his prayer poem “A Psalm of obsession.” When things go wrong, he wrote to God,

Your will
Becomes our food
our drink
the very air we breathe.
Too soon
the crisis passes
and we’re right back
where we were
before.

The poem ends, “Dear Lord forgive.” And perhaps that’s how our prayer should begin as we remember 9/11. We were driven to prayer because of unthinkable loss that morning. But today a new skyscraper stands at the World Trade Center site, and the façade of the Pentagon is whole. With ingenuity and determination, we worked to rebuild, and we’re proud of what we could do.

But crisis will come again, not only to our nation but in each individual life. Strength built on a foundation of daily communication with God has the best chance of standing against the attacks we will face.

“In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6, 7).