Monday seems so long ago. It could have been another century. Tuesday the mountains trembled. My parents never forgot where they were when they heard Pearl Harbor had been bombed. My generation will never forget where we were when John F. Kennedy was killed. Now a whole new generation will never forget where they were on the morning of September 11, 2001, another date which will live in infamy.

If you had moments of total disbelief last week; if you had difficulty concentrating; if you went numb at times; there's a reason. After a serious physical injury we go into shock. We can not and do not absorb all the pain at one time. So it is when we suffer a grievous emotional and spiritual wound. We can not and do not absorb all the pain at once. If you had trouble coping at times, please don't beat yourself up over it. All of us have been deeply wounded. It is no small miracle we've functioned as well as we have through these days.

We will remember Tuesday for the rest of our lives. Our wounds will heal and we will bear the scars for life. Fifty years from now a child will ask her grandmother, "Where were you when …," and the grandmother will know. Exactly. There's a reason we remember. Only as we plumb the depths of our wounds do we heal. So we will remember and tell our stories over and over. Rick Ransom has offered to moderate our conversation downstairs in the Social Hall after worship. Get a cup of coffee. Pull up a chair. In telling our stories and listening to others we heal.

The mountains trembled. In a beautiful, hideous orange fireball against a bright blue sky we witnessed the worst human beings can do. Why? Why did this happen? Where was God?

Two well known preachers agreed on television that God "pulled back the curtain" and allowed thousands of innocent Americans to die as punishment for our nation's sins. I hope Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell were dazed and in a state of shock when they said that. It is blasphemy! It is making God out to be an accomplice to mass murder. God did not cause the carnage of Tuesday.

Neither did the intelligence services cause the carnage. Neither did air traffic controllers or airport baggage inspectors or flight crews or the FBI. I don't want our own people blamed for the deaths of thousands; not now and not later. Yes, we will change policies and procedures. Let us remember that it was not our people but well trained, deeply committed, utterly heartless terrorists who did this.

It was not the Muslim faith that caused the terrorists to murder thousands. The Ku Klux Klan burns crosses. We don't suppose they represent Christianity no matter what they claim. As white supremacists and anti-Semites pervert our faith so these terrorists pervert Islam. In no way do they represent our Muslim sisters and brothers.

I still haven't answered the question, have I? If God didn't cause it, why didn't God stop it? The best answer I can offer isn't very satisfying to me. I doubt it will satisfy you. God could not stop the terrorists. We are made in God's image. We are made with great and terrible freedom. We are free to choose good or evil; life or death. God can not overrule our choices. If God could overrule our choices we wouldn't really be free. We are free, terribly free to choose. Tuesday morning we saw the consequences when people choose evil and death. The mountains trembled. Friday at noon as our nation grieved a light rain fell. God wept.

In flame and smoke we saw the worst human beings can do. That is not all we saw last week. Within minutes of the first blast hundreds of firefighters, paramedics, and police were on the scene. In their dash to save the lives of others, hundreds lost their own. If we ever took such people for granted in the past we never will again. Passengers aboard the fourth airliner, by now aware of what happened in Washington and New York, apparently crashed their own plane rather than let it be used to kill more people on the ground. There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for another as Jesus did.

The heroes kept on coming. Carpenters, steam fitters, and iron workers; all of them volunteers; some from as far away as Michigan; swarm over the wreckage. The rubble they walk on is still burning. The air they breathe is full of poisonous dust. They descend into hell in the hope of saving one more life. In the last decade engineers, entrepreneurs, designers, and managers brought our country enormous prosperity. They were our heroes and rightly so. Today it is men and women with tool belts, not briefcases, who are our heroes. If we ever took working people for granted in the past we never will again.

The owner of an upscale shoe store, seeing women trudging past, trying to make their way home on foot in high heeled shoes opened his shop and gave away his entire inventory of athletic shoes. What he had was shoes, so that's what he gave. Here in Washington the phone company pulled technicians off jobs, gave them a van load of cell phones, and sent them to the Pentagon. As rescue workers were overcome by the enormity of the tragedy technicians handed them a phone so they could call a loved one and draw some comfort. Restaurants, hotels, and caterers sent food. The owner of a fast food franchise in New York keeps it open around the clock. He has no food to sell. He offers it as a place of refuge for rescue workers to go, to sit, to nurse their own wounds, and get a few minutes' rest. There are hundreds and hundreds of stories like these. What people have they give.

In a small town in upstate New York two high schools played football yesterday. The price of admission was a pair of work socks. Two thousand pairs arrived in Manhattan last night. At a high school here in Maryland that was not closed on Wednesday members of the National Honor Society decided at 10:00 a.m. to collect donations for the Red Cross. Students emptied their pockets of whatever money they happened to bring that day. By 2:00 in the afternoon they had given $300. Here in Greenbelt at the entrance to a grocery store more than $1000 has been collected in the last two days. Children set up a lemonade stand to raise money for relief. They made more than $600. You know they didn't sell that much lemonade. The children and the people who stopped and paid for a cup of lemonade with a twenty - keep the change - they're all heroes.

I am enormously proud of our country right now. I have never seen us as united as we are right now. People of every race and class, every ethnic group and religious faith stand together. Terrorists have shattered our buildings. We will not be shattered.

It's not just us. The world stands with us. In the bulletin there's a message from Felix in Germany. I have seen others from Namibia, Senegal, Thailand, Mauritania, Portugal, Morocco, Ghana, South Africa, Turkey, Israel, England, Switzerland, and France to name a few. Lena in Singapore hopes she can give her blood there to help us here.

God did not cause the deaths of thousands of innocent people on Tuesday. Once a few people chose evil and death God could not stop them. That's what it means to be free to choose.

God was not absent last week. God was in the hearts of firefighters who gave their lives saving others. God was in the bloody fingertips of laborers who won't quit digging. God was in the chef handing out sandwiches. God was in the children pouring out lemonade. God is in you and me. Our hearts were broken Tuesday morning. By the grace of God they are broken open.

Good and life and love will yet prevail. Though the mountains tremble the God of hosts is with us.