Twenty-Five Years Later: Still Our Refuge and Strength

A quarter of a century has passed since a bright September morning was torn open. On September 11, 2001, nearly three thousand men, women, and children were taken from us in an act of calculated evil. Families were shattered. First responders ran toward the fire. Ordinary people became heroes in stairwells and on a field in Pennsylvania. The skyline changed. So did the country.

Twenty-five years is long enough for children who never knew that day to become adults, and for memory itself to grow quieter. That is why we must still speak of it—not to nurse bitterness, but to remember what was lost, honor those who served, and look again at the One who does not change.

The Bible never pretends the world is safe. It looks evil in the face. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked,” Jeremiah wrote (Jeremiah 17:9). Jesus Himself said, “In this world you will have trouble,”  (John 16:33).  September 11 was one of those days when the trouble became visible to everyone at once. Towers that seemed immovable fell. A sense of security that many of us had taken for granted was gone in a couple of hours.

Yet Scripture does not leave us there.

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.” That is Psalm 46:1. The psalmist had seen shaking ground and collapsing structures. He did not deny the terror. He pointed past it to the God who remains when everything else gives way. The Lord is not a distant observer. He is “a very present help.”

Psalm 27, which David sang in his own seasons of fear, asks the question we still ask: “The Lord is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?” Fear is real. Grief is real. The Lord is more real still. He does not always explain why He permits what He permits. He does promise that He is with His people in the fire.

Many who lived through that day—and many who only watched it on television—found that promise to be true. Some came to faith in the weeks that followed. Others who already belonged to Christ discovered that the gospel they had confessed was strong enough to carry real loss. The God who numbers our hairs also numbers our tears. “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit,”  (Psalm 34:18).  He is the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others.

A quarter century later, the call is not to forget, nor to live in perpetual outrage. It is to remember rightly. Remember the lives. Remember the courage. Remember that evil is not the last word. The same Jesus who warned us of trouble also said, “Take heart! I have overcome the world,”  (John 16:33).  The cross and the empty tomb stand over every act of terror. Death does not get the final say.

Isaiah spoke of One who would give “beauty for ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair,”  (Isaiah 61:3).  That work is already underway in everyone who belongs to Christ, and it will be finished when He makes all things new. Revelation 21 looks ahead to the day when “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” No more hijacked planes. No more falling towers. No more empty chairs at the table.

Until that day, we live as people who have a refuge. We pray for those who still carry wounds that do not show. We honor the dead by how we treat the living. We refuse to let fear become our master. And we keep pointing one another to the God who was there on September 11, 2001, who is here on September 11, 2026, and who will be there when this age is over.

Again, to quote the prophet Jeremiah in Lamentations 3:22 —

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

That is still true. A quarter of a century later, it is still the word we need.