Jesus, The Cross, and 9/11 World Trade Center by Myra Kahn Adams for Town Hall
Tomorrow will be 20 years since the discovery of what we call the “World Trade Center Cross” found amidst buried bodies and tons of toxic, smoking rubble.
Back on Sept. 10, 2012 — the day before the 11th anniversary of 9/11 — I wrote a piece on PJ Media (before it was a Salem-owned sister-site to Townhall) headlined “Atheist Lawsuit Against World Trade Center Cross Makes Me Want to Scream.”
Praise the Lord that the atheists lost their inappropriate and insensitive lawsuit two months after the May 2014 public opening of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum on ground zero in New York City.
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Since July 23, 2011 — when the 17-foot-tall “intersecting steel” beams resembling a Christian cross was lowered by crane into the under-construction museum — the court had to rule whether the cross could remain part of the museum’s permanent collection.
In my 2012 piece, I asked Colby May, “director and senior counsel with the Washington office of the ACLJ” [American Center for Law & Justice], to explain the case. Related to the meaning of the cross as part of today’s Bible study, here is what May said:
“On September 13, 2001, two days after the worst terrorist attacks in American history, New York City firefighter Frank Silecchia discovered two steel beams in the shape of a cross just after recovering three bodies from the rubble of the collapsed World Trade Center. Silecchia told ABC News of his immediate reaction: ‘I was overwhelmed with the image of my faith… it brought me to tears and to my knees.’
“Silecchia was not alone in his reaction. Contemporaneous reports are unanimous in recording the immediate and profound effect that the cross had on first responders and rescue workers. This is why the cross is at the ‘historical exhibition’ of the September 11 Memorial museum, where it chronicles not only the recovery and rescue efforts but how we understand ‘collective grief.’
