Wednesday, September 10, 2008

A 9/11 Tribute

On September 11, 2001, two planes slammed into the Trade Center Towers in New York City, and another hit the Pentagon. A fourth plane slammed into a Shanksville, Pennsylvania field.

Flight 93 left Newark Liberty International Airport and soon reversed its westward course, possibly aiming for the White House. Passengers contested the murderous terrorists, and they crashed into the soft ground at 600 miles per hour. When rescuers arrive at the scene, the plane had mostly disappeared. Only two identifiable objects met their curious eyes. One was a burning tire. The other was a Bible—fuel-soaked and flopping in the breeze, but intact—that belonged to Don Peterson.

Retired from his successful business, Don was a counselor of recovering alcoholics at the Keswick Colony of Mercy, a central New Jersey ministry on whose board he served. He often helped men by praying for them and assisting them to return to normal life through encouragement and monetary aid. Inside the Bible was a list of the men at Keswick Don was praying for.

On the Thursday following the attacks after many of the passengers’ names had made the news, my daughter asked me, "Dad, did you know Don Peterson?" Her voice had the hollow timbre of knowing I did and that I would take the news very hard.

I knew Don years before he went to Heaven from Shanksville. He had invited me to hold a living room dialog with friends in his Maplewood, NJ home. We served together on the board of a Christian college. He engaged me to speak at an annual banquet for a fine crisis pregnancy outreach. From time to time, he financially supported our ministry as he did for so many others.
Don and his wife, Jean, were booked on a later flight but had taken Flight 93 that awesome September morning hoping to arrive earlier for a family gathering in California. They went straight to Heaven instead.

Before 9/11, both Don and Jean made visionary statements as they looked into the unknown future. On Monday evening, September 10, Don attended his regular Bible study group in Manasquan, NJ. In his parting words to the class coordinator, Dave Withers, Don said, "I’ll see you at Christmas," a reference to the group’s next study of the Nativity story in Luke. Though Don planned to be with the group again, he was also prepared for whatever God had in store for the future. Withers also recalls Don saying to him, "Our Christian walk is supposed to be a journey, but I feel so ready." Jean, too, had expressed thoughts of eternity. At the study group in August, she told a friend, "I don’t know why, but I feel so ready to meet the Lord!"

Friends of the Petersons believe they were sharing God’s Good News probably until the moment of impact. Their lives reflect 1 John 2:17: "And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever." Indeed, Christ’s coming for them would not be the Rapture with its exodus in "a moment and twinkling of an eye," (I Cor. 15:52), but their departure for Heaven was surely as fast.

On this seventh anniversary of 9/11, as we recall the Petersons’ swift Heavenly journey, an old hymn by G. A Young comes to mind:

Away from the mire, and away from the clay,
God leads His dear children along;
Away up in glory, eternity’s day,
God leads His dear children along.
Some through the waters, some through the flood,
Some through the fire, but all through the blood;
Some through great sorrow, but God gives a song;
In the night season and all the day long.

Dave Virkler

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