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Good morning. ÌýToday is 9/11. Can it really be 13 years since we watched planes plough into the twin towers of New York, horrifically aware that it wasn’t a disaster movie, but real life? <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

It’s one of those days you remember where you were. I watched the horror unfold, on a silent TV in a hospital clinic waiting room, as domestics, doctors and nurses slowly joined us, all open-mouthed.

But my main memory is that a colleague was staying with me that week - an American. The effect of 9/11 on him, in those first shocking hours, was to try and make contact with his wife and family. Were they safe? And critically, had they heard from their son, a student in New York. The lines were permanently busy and the waiting was awful. But late that evening, several hours after the first tower collapsed, with the phone on constant redial he made contact: his wife and son were alive and well. And he sat on the couch and wept with relief.

In these days as the ‘fight against terror’ takes new twists and turns, and we warily watch new news stories emerge, of further mass atrocities, of millions of refugees desperately seeking safety in various places, let us remember that amid each ‘big story’ are hundreds of thousands of individual life threads about husbands and daughters, sons and wives, fathers and mothers, friends and family, who to somebody – are everything. Ìý

Merciful God, we pray for those whose decisions shape the world: those who promulgate violence and conflict and those trying to respond to issues facing us all. And we pray today for each soul, often innocently caught up in the ‘big events’ of the world, and those who love and care for them. Amen.

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