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This is what it is like for emergency service workers—the firefighters, the police officers, and the emergency medical technicians (EMTs) who give all they have to disaster work. It is also what it is like for a crisis chaplain. During disaster work, there is always one hallowed moment that gives the chaplain a special sense of why he or she is there. If the journey is made for no other reason than to meet that person and that need, the trip would be worthwhile. This was such a moment for my team member. This was Ryan's "win."

How do you do it? people ask. My question is, How does anyone do it?

My goal as a crisis chaplain had always been to show the compassionate side of God in crisis, to be a tangible reminder of personal, loving God—to light a match in the midst of darkness. Really, it seems a paradox. A place created by so much evil is the last place most people think a God of love would be. It's certainly the last place most people would want to be. But where else should we be?

From those first moments inside the ground zero site, I knew the only way the rage and horror would not overpower any good could do was to consciously keep my focus on an eternal perspective. Working on the pile, I already sensed, would be overwhelming. Digging through sixteen acres of utter destruction all but represented futility. If we as a nation didn't respond, though, it would be as if we were saying we accept evil and nothing can be done about it.

But there was also something else that kept the futility at bay for me. In addition to the dignity of life provided by my helping to recover the victims, I believed I was part of a bigger story being told by a Creator who deals in restoration, a story that started with the story of Christ, God's greatest redemption story. God never changes; in times of crisis, God waits to work through the losses in our lives. I believed that this story, begun on a beautiful September morning, was a tragedy—but a tragedy from which God wanted to redeem every part. I'm fairly certain of my heart's condition without the Christ story's effect on my own life; I know I would not have been standing in ground zero. I'd have been busy chasing my own goals, which would never have included helping people at a disaster site. But I have been so moved by the love and grace I've seen in my own life that the feeling propels me into trauma situations in hopes of helping others feel the same comfort. It's a powerful, powerful thing. And it is nothing but a humbling privilege to be a possible part of the redemption story in another person's heart. I cannot speak for others' reasons for why or how they do it, but that is mine.

Yet for the first few days at ground zero, I must confess that my efforts to fend off the anguish pouring from the atrocity surrounding me would be a struggle. So, purposely, from that first night, I resolved not to look at the rubble. I would force myself to look at the faces, to focus on seeing life, not death. And when I did look at the ruins, I would look for God in it—and, remarkably enough, the rubble itself did just that for many of the workers during the earliest days.

There was a place the workers called "God's House" within one of the caved-in buildings of ground zero. Inside what was left of the U.S. Customs building was a small miracle that everyone held on to during those first few weeks. A construction worker had stumbled onto it. A part of the north tower, Tower One, had fallen through the roof of the Customs building, creating a crater-sized hole all the way into the sublevels. Spray-painted arrows led inside, winding in and around the ruins; the floors above and below were compromised, and the surrounding din was loud, loud, loud—deafening to the point of pain. But with a step inside this interior area, its roof open to the sky, nothing but an unearthly quiet was heard. And there, rising from the despair, were three broken girders standing against the twisted, crushed wreckage of the building's offices. And they were, all three, broken off in the shape of crosses—distinct and heartbreaking.

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September (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46