The Lord has given many opportunities to minister to all kinds of people since last September. The list of the dead does not accurately reflect the many casualties of that day and the destruction it left in its wake. For many, the reality has just recently struck. We have had a number of rescue workers come to the Yonkers Gospel Mission for help. Because of the total neglect for anything but the effort of recovering the dead, these men and women now find they have no homes, as they had not paid any bills for months and now are living in the street. Some are so affected by the horrors of what they have seen that they walk around in a stupor—they’re not sure where they are going and can’t remember where they have been. There is no concept of a future and certainly no hope. These are lost. A man recently came to us for housing, desperate and in despair. We granted him his request but he couldn’t handle going to sleep at night, so he didn’t stay.
Recently, I was in the airport renting a car. While I was at the counter, the woman who was helping me received a telephone call. I stood and watched as her pleasant expression turned to shock and dismay and then a scream, followed by uncontrollable sobbing that no comforting could console. She looked up and said to me and her co-workers, “They found a piece of my son!” The moment after she spoke, she collapsed onto the floor and would not move. As she lay there, all that ran through my mind was, “ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13).
Our hope is as sure as God can make it. Therefore it is as sure as His unchangeable character and as certain as His unalterable Word: “That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus…” (Heb. 6:18-20a).
We are so blessed to know our dear Saviour the way we do—to have this One who intercedes for us before the Father. This is the same One who left heaven for us and then went back to heaven for us and now He lives for us and has given us the earnest of the inheritance. What a strong consolation! This is the hope that we offer to those who have none. Compassion for souls is what we need, to perfect the art of weeping with those that weep and giving them reason to rejoice.
I was in a restaurant the other day. Two men were seated next to me. One was telling the other of some third-hand story he had heard from September 11 and the other man responded, “Everybody has a story.” I imagine that’s so. I’m sure everyone will remember where they were on that day. Countless people were directly affected by it. That is why I have no interest in telling some worn-out story to glamorize the day’s events. It doesn’t need that. It was a violent tragedy. Now the same massive effort that was put into the physical rescue operation needs to be put into a spiritual rescue so that as many as possible may be saved from a very violent and tragic end.
“Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel!”
Written by Michael Thomas