In 1998, Reader’s Digest published an article “This Man Wants You Dead” and featured Osama bin Laden.

As a very young teen, it frightened me to think of someone so filled with hatred he wanted people dead that he didn’t even know. Then I forgot about him until being woken up on a Tuesday morning by a phone call from my grandmother: planes had hit the World Trade Center and she was afraid it was terrorism.

Since I had maybe only heard of the WTC once in my life, and I lived in a sheltered world, I did not understand the import of her words and glibly assured her that God was in control.

Then I went back to bed.

As the day progressed, I realized that planes hitting buildings and imploding them was not normal. This attack was unheard of, and my sheltered world was not sheltered any more.

In the last fifteen years, we rebuilt the Pentagon, found Osama bin Laden, and the markets rebounded.

It is a different world now than 15 years ago. Some things however have not changed.

Evil will still use terrorism as a vehicle to spread hatred and fear, the opposites of love.

Most importantly, God Almighty, the God who knows us intimately, the God who wants us to live, is still — and always — in control.