We at Greenville College, like our fellow citizens around the nation, found ourselves numbed as we witnessed one tragic event unfold after another. Each one alone seemed impossible, and taken together the feeling was surreal. Accustomed as we are to the films and books of fiction describing airliner terrorist attacks on government buildings and skyscraper fires, we struggled to understand how what we saw live on television could possibly be happening. We waited for the movie to end.

We imagined then cringed at the last thoughts not only of passengers in those planes, but then at the intensity of purpose and hate in the minds of those who piloted them to their deaths. We second-guessed our confidence in our own nation's innocence from oppression overseas. Then we began to realize the numbers of people who must have been killed in the collapse of a 110-story building, and in those first hours it dawned on us that many others might be trapped and dying even as the impact of events began to sink in.

Our numbness changed to anger as we saw one of our own cities covered with the dust and debris we're accustomed to seeing in Beirut or Jerusalem. We saw major symbols of our wealth and our power reduced to dust. And perhaps worst of all, we saw our own citizens forced to run for shelter in fear in our own streets.

We asked ourselves, “Why didn’t we have any warning?” but caught ourselves short, unwilling to believe that much can ever be done to anticipate suicidal events like these. Then we imagined ways to prevent it in the future, but caught ourselves short of the grim prospect of police-state restrictions on our own freedom. We contemplated revenge, eager to find someone against whom to lash out, but caught ourselves again, aware that to point fingers, to curtail our own freedoms, or to lash out in revenge would be to let those who committed this cowardly act of violence win in twisting our hearts to the image of their own.

The genius of our culture in the United States is its openness. The price we pay for that openness is our vulnerability, and on this day we were forced again, as we have been on the occasion of other historic national tragedies, to pay yet another installment on that price. But we also know that despite recent years of internal dissension, and despite recent decades of disillusionment about the altruism and patriotism of our citizenry, we have all become well aware that in difficult times, Americans stand together.

We pull together and stand together when threatened from outside, and we began to see that happen, symbolized by the firemen and police officers even in cynical New York city, sacrificing themselves for others, and perhaps most poignantly by democratic and republican senators and congressmen joining on the steps of the capitol in a spontaneously rendering of God Bless America.

So the roots of our culture in sacrifice and faith are apparently not dead after all. And as Christians, we must take the lead in modeling what we believe would be the responses of our Lord. In the face of terrible and tragic injustice, He responded with self-sacrifice and love. We must not leap to conclusions about the perpetrators nor take it out on minorities in our midst. We must not shrink from the careful and thoughtful work to be done to uncover those responsible, but we must not stoop to their level in response. We must distinguish justice from revenge.

At Greenville College, we have met to pray silently; once at noon on that Terrible Tuesday and again in a circle of a thousand at noon on Scott Field that following Friday a national day of mourning. We pray for all those who have suffered directly. We pray for our nation that we might respond with moderation and maturity as a model to the world. The world is watching. We pray that students who have rightfully moved beyond blind patriotism will now also move beyond feckless skepticism to understand both the privileges and responsibilities of living in our imperfect society. And we pray for us all, that both our minds and hearts will be stretched so that we may grow in wisdom and grace through this terrible attack on innocent people. We pray, with God's help, for transformation of lives for character and service. Let us pray His help on this occasion to model that transformation in ourselves.