As people around America and perhaps the world contemplate today's anniversary of the 2001 World Trade Center attacks, all of us likely wonder, where was God the morning of September 11?  Why didn't he stop the hijackers from flying those airplanes into the towers?  Why did he allow all those people to die?
     No one can tell us why, really and ultimately, these things happen.  And no one can tell us why God seems to stand by when they do, watching, maybe even laughing, unwilling to care, unwilling to intervene.  No one.  Our finitude simply will not allow it.
     What can we do?  Whenever we remember a tragedy, be it that of September 11 or one that has directly ripped our own life completely asunder, we need to believe that regardless of what we may think, and irrespective of what we may see, God is--and always will be--light.  We need to believe that, somehow, some way, God, the God who sent his son to die for us, will always be our light, our beacon, our measure and fountain of greatest hope, the light in which, as the psalmist puts it (Psalm 36), even in the blackest of nights, "we see light."
     As evangelist Billy Graham, speaking in New York City about the events of September 11, 2001, said, "How do we understand something like this?  Why does God allow evil like this to take place?"  Like all of us, Graham had no answers.  And like all of us, he probably never will, at least in this life.
     "But," Graham continued, "But God can be trusted, even when life seems at its darkest."
     As Graham would readily acknowledge, this is so easy to say yet so very hard to do.  In the face of such tragedy, however, it's really all we can--and should--do.  Difficult as it is, we can trust God.  Somehow, some way, he knows.  Somehow, some way, he is there.
     Again:  God is light.