CYBERCOLUMN:
Stunned
___By Berry D. Simpson
___Sept. 11, I arrived at Midland City Hall for a briefing before the normal city council meeting, totally oblivious to how our world had changed. Driving to the meeting, I was listening to a book on CD, so I hadn’t heard any of the morning news reports about the hijacked airliners or the multiple crashes into the World Trade Center or the Pentagon.

BERRY D. SIMPSON

___When I got to the briefing, I wondered why everyone was buzzing. The agenda, while important, didn’t look volatile enough to generate the level of energy in the room.
___Someone said, "Suddenly our issues don’t seem very important," and they told me what happened. My first thought was, "This is straight out of a Tom Clancy novel," and then I realized even Tom Clancy didn’t anticipate a disaster to this degree. The real world had once again trumped fiction.
___By the time regular council meeting started at 10, we were still reeling from each piece of late-breaking news.
___It was a comfort when Curt Bezinque, pastor of Midland Christian Fellowship, came to the microphone to lead us in our traditional opening prayer. He said he had a quote he wanted to read from a famous political leader who found himself in trouble. This was a leader who, as a highly successful military commander, was exiled from his own country as a result of political intrigue and infighting. He later returned to head the government and build his country to unprecedented power and wealth, only to be thrown out of office once again in a coup. He later returned as head of government one more time.
___Here is what this man wrote:
___"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
___I was glad we followed the prayer with the Pledge of Allegiance, because it gave me an opportunity to catch my breath and to turn away from the room full of people and wipe away the tears. I was stunned by the pastor’s comments, and I was embarrassed to realize how I thought these dangers were unique to us, embarrassed at my lack of historical perspective, and embarrassed at how I forgot who my Shepherd was. Shame on me.
___As the day went on, my embarrassment changed to an overwhelming sense of vulnerability. I wasn’t afraid of similar attacks in Midland. That isn’t what bothered me. But I was feeling concern for the people just like me who serve in government in New York City and in Washington who were to make quick and irreversible decisions, and how overwhelmed they must feel.
___After the city council meeting was over, I went home to watch the news coverage on TV. I had a lot of catching up to do since we had been inside the cocoon of city hall for several hours and I didn’t know any of the details. About 3 p.m., I drove over to Greathouse Elementary, where Cyndi, my wife, teaches fifth grade, because I needed to see her and hold her hand and remind myself of the security she brings to my life.
___That night, we had a prayer meeting at my church, just like churches and communities all over the country, and the building was full of people, just like everywhere else. I was on the program to read through a list of names of government leaders and ask everyone to pray for those leaders. I realized that the effect of my sense of vulnerability was to run toward God. And not just me, but thousands of people in my community and across the nation. It occurred to me that if we were never shocked into vulnerability, we might never come to God.
___Well, it is still hard to know how to think about what happened. Hard to know what to say when someone asks, "What is the city’s perspective?" And hard to know how to pray. That’s OK. We don’t have to know all the right answers; we just have to know the answer, which is, Jesus Christ.
___I read a quote in the next morning’s Dallas Morning News by T.D. Jakes, a pastor in Dallas, who said, "Our faith is being tested now, but faith is not embarrassed by disaster. … He will be there with us."
Amen.


___Berry Simpson, a Sunday School teacher at First Baptist Church in Midland, is a petroleum engineer, writer, runner and member of the city council in Midland.





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