he other shoe to drop. We can “move on.” We can “put it behind us.” We can “get on with life.” We can buy our Christmas presents and watch our Super Bowls. But the towers still crash.

September 11 was a monumental day in the history and life of this nation. Perhaps “anti-monumental” might be a better descriptor, since that day saw the collapse of two of the great monuments of American capitalism and prosperity, as well as severe damage to the symbol of our military strength.

Everyone has a September 11 story to tell. Mine is modest. I heard of the attacks while eating breakfast in a hotel restaurant in Little Rock, Ark. Since we were in town to visit the people at FamilyLife, my colleagues and I went immediately to FamilyLife’s headquarters and participated in an hour-long emergency prayer vigil. Every few minutes, someone came in with an update, including the terrible news of the first tower’s collapse. At day’s end, we decided to keep our rental car and drive back to Virginia. That night, at some random hotel in Tennessee, I slept like a baby.

As Christians, we can easily miss the truly devastating impact of these events. After all, we’ve met the Author and we know how the story is going to end. Not even the most horrible news events can shake the foundations of someone secure in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. But at times, the very nature of that relationship can cause us to miss the obvious. We can bask in the security of grace—agreeing with Thomas Browne: “I am not so much afraid of death as I am ashamed of it”—all the while missing the truth that right now, beneath the surface, a great many people are as shaken and afraid as they have been in a very long time.

On the ground in the city, Chuck organized Campus Crusade’s response to the tragic attacks. From the very moment of their arrival, Chuck’s team encountered the terrible toll from the collapse of the towers. One young man’s response was particularly moving.

“He must have been 28 or 29 years old,” Chuck Price recalls, “He just came up to me, laid his head on my shoulder and began weeping uncontrollably. Between his sobs, he told me that he had seen several people jump out of the towers before they collapsed. The thing that he kept saying was, ‘I worked with these people every day, and I never talked to them about the Lord, and I’ll never have an opportunity again to talk to those people.’ It was an overwhelming sense of loss and the remorse of not having shared with his co-workers.”

Over the next few days, team members were struck with the spiritual openness all around the city. Suddenly, people on the street would flock to makeshift prayer stations. Suddenly, it was OK to talk about God. Suddenly, people were willing to listen.

Wanting to offer a message of hope to a hurting city, Chuck and his team decided to produce a tribute magazine for the firefighters and rescue workers lost in the collapse. They contacted our company—the Journey Group—to help produce the magazine. The timeline was short: We had just eight days to conceive, produce and print the magazine, which we called Fallen but not Forgotten.

Once the magazine began hitting the streets, response was overwhelming. People—New Yorkers—would literally line up to get a copy. Volunteers around the city would take hundreds out at a time and hand them out, and almost none ended up on the street or in the trash. At one ferry stop, four volunteers handed out 8,000 copies in less than an hour. A second version had similar effect at the Pentagon. Then a version for the Wall Street audience, as well as translation of the original magazine into five languages, and a “courage” version (after the anthrax attacks) In all, more than 15 million copies of these magazines have been produced.

Responding to the unique evangelistic opportunity, Campus Crusade has launched the 911 Remembrance Project, aimed at reaching the nation’s 100 largest cities.

(To learn more about the project, please visit our Web sites: www.911remembrance.com, support.911remembrance.com.)

It has been estimated that the cleanup process at Ground Zero could take a year or more to complete. Rebuilding the devastated lives will take much more time than that. And for our nation, a unique moment. The other towers are still falling. The tower of exemption—the arrogant assumption that God will perpetually protect America from an evil world—is still falling. The tower of security—the belief that economic and military strength are enough to insulate us—has fallen. And for many, the tower of self-sufficiency—the belief that we can be good enough on our own and have no need for God—has yet to fall.