Brian Ebie, September 11, 2017
Behavioral Psychologists have a term they call “Flashbulb Memories.” A flashbulb memory is a highly detailed, exceptionally vivid ‘snapshot’ of the moment and circumstances in which a piece of surprising and consequential news was heard.
All of us have examples of these types of flashbulb memories and are probably able to recall a number of details about the event. My dad tells the story of working on a furnace in a woman’s house in Akron. Suddenly he heard her screaming and running around on the floor above him. Thinking she was being attacked, he grabbed a large pipe wrench and ran up the stairs to confront the invader but instead found the woman sobbing on her couch in front of a black and white TV showing footage of the events in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
I tried to think of some flashbulb memories that I’ve experienced, and went back a few years to some that perhaps some of you who are a bit wiser may have experienced as well:
- 1865 – President Abraham Lincoln Assassinated (show of hands?)
- 1912 – The Titanic Sinks (Anyone? Grandma was 6 months old)
- 1941 – Pearl Harbor attacked
- 1945 – First Atomic Bomb dropped on Hiroshima
- 1957 – Sputnik
- 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis
- 1963 – President John Kennedy assassinated
- 1968 – Martin Luther King assassinated
- 1968 – Robert Kennedy assassinated
- 1969 – First moon landing
- 1970 – Kent State University Shootings
- 1972 – Watergate/President Nixon Resigns
- 1977 – Elvis Presley Dies
- 1978 – Jonestown Mass Suicide
- 1979 – Iranian Hostage Crisis
- 1979 – Three Mile Island Meltdown
- 1986 – Space Shuttle Challenger Explodes
- 1986 – Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster
- 1988 – Lockerbie Bombing
- 1989 – Fall of the Berlin Wall
- 1990 – Nelson Mandela is Freed after 27 years
- 1994 – OJ Simpson Slow Speed Chase
- 1995 – Oklahoma City Bombing
- 1997 – Princess Diana is Killed
- 1999 – Columbine High School Massacre
- 2001 – September 11, terrorists attack the World Trade Center in New York.
September 11, 2001. There’s a song that went “Where were you when the world stopped turning, that September day?” I was living thousands of miles from my family. Phone lines and internet service were overwhelmed and it was difficult to even make contact.
Around the country, indeed the world, prayer services were held as a people turned to God, looking for peace, comfort, and trying somehow to make sense of it all. Ministers of every faith sought to comfort their congregations and visitors.
Elder Quinten L. Cook described: “Events often occur that rob us of peace and heighten our sense of vulnerability. Our oldest son and his wife, who were expecting their first child, lived three blocks from the World Trade Center in New York City when the first plane crashed into the North Tower. They went to the roof of their apartment building and were horrified as they watched what they thought was some kind of terrible accident. Then they witnessed the second plane crash into the South Tower. They immediately realized that this was no accident. When the South Tower collapsed, their apartment building was engulfed in the dust cloud that rained down over lower Manhattan.
Confused and concerned about further attacks, they made their way…to the Manhattan stake Church building. When they arrived, they found that dozens of other members in lower Manhattan had… gather[ed] at the stake center. They called… [and] I was relieved that they were safe but not surprised at their location. Modern revelation teaches that the stakes of Zion are a defense and “a refuge from the storm, and from wrath when it shall be poured out without mixture upon the whole earth.” (D&C 115:6)
I have a lot of hymns stored in my brain, but it was our song “Where Can I turn for Peace” that has been a gentle reminder to turn to the Savior.
Part 1
Where can I turn for peace?
Where is my solace
When other sources cease to make me whole?
When with a wounded heart, anger, or malice,
I draw myself apart,
Searching my soul?
In times of terrorism, financial peril, senseless violence in our hometowns, and great world unrest, we ask Just like King Zedikiah asked Jeremiah, “Is there any word from the LORD?” And we look to friends, family, and leaders be they church or world for answers. We wonder why does God let this happen? We don’t understand all of the reasons why bad things happen. Paul helps us with this thought:
12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. I Corinthians 13:12.
I like to liken that scripture to my life this way: “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.”
I love this conversation between Enoch and the Lord in the Pearl of Great Price. Enoch said: “How is it that thou canst weep, seeing thou art holy, and from all eternity to all eternity?” (Moses 7:29).
The Lord answers in what I think is one of the saddest passages of scripture:
“Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency;
“And unto thy brethren have I said, and also given commandment, that they should love one another, and that they should choose me, their Father; but behold, they are without affection, and they hate their own blood” (Moses 7:32–33).
Clearly, what the Lord desires is that we love one another and choose to obey Him. But some do not. They are “without affection.” Everyone on earth has agency, and sometimes those who misuse it have an impact on many innocent people. This scripture provides evidence that the Lord notices the tragedies on the earth and that He is affected by them.
Many of the bad things that happen are contrary to God’s will. But remember that man’s will is temporary, and ultimately God’s will is what will be done. (From John Bytheway)
Elder Jeffery R. Holland said: “The Savior [spoke] to His disciples as He faced His Crucifixion and as they faced fear, disarray, and persecution. In His last collective counsel to them in mortality, He said: ‘These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world’ (John 16:33).
“So, in a world of tribulation, let’s remember our faith. … And let’s live life more fully, with more boldness and courage than at any other time.
“Christ has overcome the world and made a path for us.”
As the hymn says, other sources will cease to make us whole. Turning away from Christ and seeking comfort in the bottle, illegal drugs, worldly goods, or pornography will never satisfy. These only lead down a dark path, one that is difficult from which to return. Instead we need to draw ourselves apart, and turn our eyes and heart to Jesus. We can find His peace in scriptures, through prayer, and in our songs.
Part 2
Where, when my aching grows,
Where, when I languish,
Where, in my need to know, where can I run?
Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish?
Who, who can understand?
He, only One.
Christian author Lee Strobel looked at the anguish we feel in times of trouble and shared this insight: “Suffering is a personal problem; it demands a personal response. And God isn’t some distant, detached, and disinterested deity; He entered into our world and personally experienced our pain. Jesus is there in the lowest places of our lives. Are you broken? He was broken, like bread, for us. Are you despised? He was despised and rejected of men. Do you cry out that you can’t take any more? He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Did someone betray you? He was sold out. Are your most tender relationships broken? He loved and He was rejected. Did people turn from you? They hid their faces from Him as if He were a leper. Does He descend into all of our hells? Yes, He does. From the depths of a Nazi death camp, Corrie ten Boom wrote these words: “No matter how deep our darkness, He is deeper still.” Every tear we shed becomes his tear.”
Elder Tad Callister wrote in his book The Infinite Atonement: “The Savior was no ivory-tower observer, no behind-the-lines captain… The Savior was a participant, a player, who not only understood our plight intellectually, but who felt our wounds because they became his wounds.”
So “who, who can understand? He only One.”
Part 3
He answers privately,
Reaches my reaching
In my Gethsemane, Savior and Friend.
Gentle the peace he finds for my beseeching.
Constant he is and kind,
Love without end.
I’m in a somewhat unique situation turning 50 (a week from Wednesday) and the father of a two little kids. So it’s never far from my mind that there are fewer years ahead than behind, and that the scriptures tell us things will get a lot worse before they get better. I probably won’t be around to be superman for my kids when they’re my age as my dad has been for me. What will the world be like? How much crazier can it get? So we I find strength and comfort in doing the things we’re supposed to do for our family: going to church, preparing our food storage, keeping the Sabbath holy, having family night and spending time together, reading scriptures, and praying with our children. We trust in the advice of wise King Solomon found in Proverbs 22:6 to “train up a child in the way they should go and they will not depart from it.”
Indeed, that is the gentle peace we find, and the constant love of Christ. This principle is succinctly captured in the Doctrine and Covenants: “But learn that he who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come.”
I love this advice from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland who counseled: “Live as faithfully as you possibly can. … We must not be paralyzed just because [of events] ahead of us somewhere.” “Never let fear and the father of fear (Satan himself) divert us from our faith and faithful living.” “Be faithful. God is in charge. He knows your name and He knows your need.”
Elder Quinten L. Cook said: “We earnestly hope and pray for universal peace, but it is as individuals and families that we achieve the kind of peace that is the promised reward of righteousness. This peace is a promised gift of the Savior’s mission and atoning sacrifice. We all long for peace. Peace is not just safety or lack of war, violence, conflict, and contention. Peace comes from knowing that the Savior knows who we are and knows that we have faith in Him, love Him, and keep His commandments, even and especially amid life’s devastating trials and tragedies.
The Prophet Jeremiah was no stranger to calamity. He witnessed the destruction of the Temple and saw Jerusalem set ablaze numerous times by the marauding Babylonian armies. Speaking after 9/11 President Gordon B. Hinckley said: “We of this Church know something of such groups. The Book of Mormon speaks of the Gadianton robbers, a vicious, oath-bound, and secret organization bent on evil and destruction. In their day they did all in their power, by whatever means available, to bring down the Church, to woo the people with sophistry, and to take control of the society. We see the same thing in the present situation.” President Hinckley went on to say: “Religion offers no shield for wickedness, for evil, for those kinds of things. The God in whom I believe does not foster this kind of action. He is a God of mercy. He is a God of love. He is a God of peace and reassurance, and I look to Him in times such as this as a comfort and a source of strength.”
And so Jeremiah’s advice applies equally to us today as it did in his day and for the struggles of the early church:
7 Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.
8 For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.
Conclusion
Where can we turn for peace in times of crisis like September 11? Where can we turn for peace in times of sadness in our personal lives? To Jesus the Christ whose peace surpasses all understanding.
Remember these words from Elder Holland: “So, in a world of tribulation, let’s remember our faith. … And let’s live life more fully, with more boldness and courage than at any other time.”
To that, I would add, don’t wait until a crisis strikes before praying.
C.S. Lewis said “Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing had yet been done.”
Keep Buggering On.
References:
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/12698-the-infinite-atonement
https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2012/07/why-does-god-allow-tragedy-and-suffering/
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2001/10/now-is-the-time?lang=eng
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2001/10/the-times-in-which-we-live?lang=eng
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2001/10/living-in-the-fulness-of-times?lang=eng
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2002/10/whats-in-it-for-me?lang=eng
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/04/personal-peace-the-reward-of-righteousness?lang=eng
https://www.lds.org/ensign/2013/04/where-can-i-turn-for-peace?lang=eng
brian ebie 