September 11

Sometime in 1997 I awoke with a jolt in the dead of night. Trembling, my heart pounding in my chest, and my skin covered in the cold sweat of fear, I leapt out of bed to shake the dream out of my mind…

The dream started innocently enough; I was sitting in a field with several of my dear friends on a beautiful late summer morning. Soon a Christian convert from Islam appeared, interrupting our pleasant conversation, eyes filled with terror.

“They just hit New York City!” she panicked.

I started to make a joke of it, but looking to the horizon I saw tops of skyscrapers exploding in the midst of the famous skyline.

I rarely have nightmares. But this, so vivid and horrible, knocked the wind out of me. I spent the rest of the night pacing my living room in my pajamas, praying with urgency, pleading for mercy, wondering if any of it was real…

All that week I prayed. I couldn’t shake the urgency. I knew two things: 1.) New York City was a target; 2.) Muslims were involved.

Sharing it, however, didn’t help to bring wisdom or ease the burden. Instead, those I told assessed the dream lightly as something to simply “bind” and forget. I felt the lead weight of self-doubt crash upon me; who was I to presume God would speak to me about anything of import? I summarily blocked the urgency tightly bound in my belly and went about my life.

Fast forward to September 11, 2001. My eighth grade pre-algebra class was finishing up a test. One of the girls returned to the room from the restroom and whispered to me, “Ms. Frick, was there an accident at the airport?”

“No, honey. Why do you ask?”

“Mrs. McDuffy and some of the other teachers are in the hall crying, and I heard someone say something about an airplane.”

“No; I don’t think anything has happened,” and I sent her to her seat.

But when I poked my head out of the classroom door, I saw tears streaming down my colleague’s beautiful dark cheeks. “What’s going on?” I whispered.

“Girl, they’ve hit the World Trade Center! Looks like America is under attack!”

As I reentered the room, I paced the rows of desks, privately consumed by restless agitation, waiting for the last few students to finish up. I had to know more.

After what seemed like an eternity, the last test was face down on my desk.

I stood in front of the class and quietly told them what I had heard. I decided that since they were 13 and 14 years old, they would be able to process—at least as much as any of the rest of us—what was going on in our country; in fact, I felt they needed to know—and I had to know. I turned on the classroom TV bolted high on the wall in the back of the room, and all of us watched in shocked silence as we stared at the screen.

And there I saw it before my very eyes…my dream of horror, playing out on breaking network news.

I have learned that God is no respecter of persons; He doesn’t choose to speak to us because of our pedigree, our ministry title, or even due to whether we exude the “it” factor which naturally draws people to us. No; He speaks to whoever will listen; to whoever is available. He warned many about 9/11 before it happened; for some reason, we didn’t thwart it.

I am convinced that His warning came to so many of us so that we could thwart this vicious attack on our soil. But living, as we were, in relative “peace and safety”, I guess we didn’t take His warnings as seriously as He intended.

We find ourselves today not much different than we were on September 10, 2001—things are fine. Life is good. But on September 11th that year, the veil was stripped away, and we were forced to behold the hideous face of evil.

My prayers for the last few years have largely been directed toward awakening vigilance and alertness in the American people and particularly the American church. I know the burden of “seeing” evil before it happens yet being considered odd or peculiar—even paranoid, negative, or in unbelief—when sharing that burden with others.

But, praise God, things are changing. The sleeping giant is shaking itself and is starting to stand up. In this hour, we must pray all the more as we find our way in this shifting, changing landscape. We need God. We must hear from Him, individually and corporately. Lives and souls depend on our sober response to His leading.

It is time to pray.

Dorothy