My wife and I recently visited the World Trade Center Memorial and Freedom Tower. We stood around the cavernous memorial listening to the water fall and then drain into the hole in the middle. We read names of those who were killed on 9/11 and prayed for the families still grieving. It was an humbling experience to stand in the place where so much destruction and devastation took place. I remembered how I wanted to be near a TV at all times right after it happened so I could hear if they had found any survivors.
As I stared silently into the pool, I saw the reflection of Freedom Tower in the water. I did my best to take a photo of it (seen above). I flipped the picture to show the hole where the water drained as the foundation for the new building. The loss that once was so deep, so great can become the foundation to build again. It can be what drives us to move forward. So many times though, when we experience a great loss or destruction on our life, we do the opposite.
I was thinking about all the twisted metal that was once in that spot. I saw video on TV, photos on the internet and heard first hand accounts of the mess that was created when those two building fell. I’m sure there were days where people thought, “This will never get cleaned up. There’s just too much here.” For months and years, dump truck after dump truck left the site with the rubble. It wasn’t a quick process to clean it up, but it happened with consistent effort.
Once it was all cleaned up, the task of rebuilding came into question. Should we rebuild? How should we rebuild? What should we build? Now, when I see Freedom Tower standing tall in that iconic skyline, I’m reminded that we are to clean up the mess after a destruction happens in our lives. We are to rebuild bigger and better than before. Quitting is the simple solution. Letting the debris of destruction stay where it fell doesn’t require hard work. But that’s not what God says we are to do.
Proverbs 24:16 says, “No matter how often honest (righteous) people fall, they always get up again; but disaster destroys the wicked.” How we react after a major destruction happens in our life says a lot about our spirituality. Are we content to let it destroy us or are we willing to get back up no matter how often we fall? Disaster will happen in each of our lives. It’s part of life. Each time it happens, God wants us to get back up and rebuild. He doesn’t want us to stay down and take the easy road. He wants us to clean ourselves up, dust off and start to build again. What was once a big hole will now be your foundation for going forward.
Devotions by Chris Hendrix 