22 October | Youth
«For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.» Romans 5:19
A few years ago, I visited the 9/11 Museum in New York with my family. The museum is located exactly where the two twin towers that collapsed in the 2001 terrorist attack stood. I confess that visiting that museum gave me a strong feeling. When I saw the photos of the victims and the wreckage of the towers and fire trucks, I went back in time and remembered exactly the scenes I watched on television the day of the tragedy. I was at boarding school, studying Theology and, between classes, I ran to the reception of the men's dormitory to see the terrible scenes.
Among so many artifacts from that museum, one caught my attention: the display of a window on the eighty-second floor of the South Tower which, believe me, still remains intact! It was the only one among more than 40,000 windows in the two buildings that did not break due to the impact of two Boeing 767 jets and the implosion of two 110-story buildings.
Jan Szumanski, superintendent of Tully Construction, a company that provided services at the site, was the one who discovered the intact glass panel. With his engineering team, he managed to extract the window in perfect condition and handed it over to the authorities to be displayed as a symbol of overcoming. When I saw that window, the word “resilience” immediately came to mind; a term used in different areas of knowledge, such as administration, physics and psychology. When referring to human behavior, resilience means the ability to withstand and overcome adversity. It is the quality of the individual who remains firm in the face of crises, even when the world collapses around him.
In the spiritual sense, Jesus was the only one who did not “break” amid the terrorism of sin. He remained “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Heb 7:26), while all the other “windows” shattered. His resilience against evil is the only power we have to win. If you need strength and restoration today, look to Christ. He is the Way, the Door and the only Window that brings us salvation.