O God, the nations have invaded your inheritance; they have defiled your holy temple, they have reduced Jerusalem to rubble. – Psalm 79:1

Today's Scripture Reading (September 15, 2026): Psalm 79

It seems like just yesterday that I watched in horror as the peace of a September day was crushed by hijacked planes crashing into symbolic and beloved landmarks. At the time, I was living a couple of thousand miles away, closer to the American West Coast than the East, where the horror was taking place, and yet, even there, the crashes changed things. One thing I remember was the eerie emptiness of the skies as governments tried furiously to figure out what was happening. All my life, I had watched the sky, infatuated with the flying machines that inhabited the spaces above my head. Still, on that day and for a few days after, the fantastic flying machines were no longer present, dominating the bright blue yonder. On that day, everything changed, and maybe for the first time in generations, North Americans understood a feeling that up until that day only our friends in Europe and Asia truly understood; we understood what it felt like to be vulnerable to terrorism. On that day we lost something that might have been more valuable than the Twin Towers or the possible loss of the Pentagon or even the White House. We lost our innocence, and that was something we just could not rebuild.

Psalm 76 is attributed to Asaph, but it is another of the Asaph Psalms which was probably written by a descendant of the revered Levite. The context of the Psalm appears to follow the destruction of Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E., but it was not just the city walls that were breached that day; it was also the day the temple was lost. Just like the significant losses that Americans suffered on 9/11, the temple was something that the people thought they would never lose.

The ultimate truth Israel needed to learn is that God loved them despite their losses. We seem to want to connect our losses and our hurts as evidence that God has turned his back on us, but that is not the truth. The reality that we need to understand is that God's presence during the good times is a good thing, but God's presence when planes are crashing around us and the enemy is destroying everything we hold dear is essential.

It could be argued that, at least in North America, 9/11 is the saddest day on the modern calendar. For our Jewish friends, they have another sad day. It is called Tisha B'Av, or the ninth of Av. And while on 9/11 we remember the attack on our economic (the Twin Towers), our military (the Pentagon), and an attempted attack on the political (The White House) identities, on Tisha B'Av Jews remember attacks that occurred across centuries, including the destruction of Solomon's Temple (586 B.C.E.), the destruction of Zerubbabel's Temple (70 C.E.), and the Roman Massacre of 100,000 Jews at Betar (132 C.E.) All of these events, and others, occurred on the ninth of Av. But while Tisha B'Av and 9/11 are days of great sadness, they should also be a celebration of the God who stays with us, even in the worst moments of our lives.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Psalm 137