During a television interview, together with her family, a young woman was asked what might have happened if her husband, Jeremy, who had bravely struggled with the hijackers on the plane that crashed into the Pennsylvania countryside instead of hitting the White House, had gone ahead with his plans to delay his flight. She immediately responded "I just don't want to go there." The interviewer then suggested, "It is possible that your husband may have helped to save the White House." "I know," she responded, "but I just can't talk about it."

"When I tried to understand all this it was oppressive to me." It is too much to take in, to even think about.

The psalmist was perplexed -- and so too are we often confounded, shaken, amazed and emotionally "oppressed" by what we see and hear, and sometimes experience. It is beyond comprehension. It is beyond explanation. It is beyond words. It is even, on occasion, beyond our contemplation. It's just too much. And we "don't want to go there."

Not only was the psalmist perplexed, as we often are. He also faced a choice, as do we.

The Psalmist's Choice - And Ours.

In verse 17, Asaph writes that things didn't make sense "until I entered the sanctuary of God." The sanctuary of God. That's where we gain a clearer perspective. That's where we begin to form a larger context. For "in the sanctuary of God" we find God. He's waiting there patiently for us to come to Him so He can take us in His arms and hold us and hug us tell us that He loves us. We don't need to go to a church building to find God, of course, although thousands of Americans attended church services all across the country on Friday. People from all walks of life, all faith traditions and religious practices, united in a desire to seek an eternal perspective; a divine framework within which they could place a national tragedy.

Who knows what they all believe about religion and God. Not the same thing, undoubtedly. But still, it is amazing how a national crisis binds our nation together, not just politically, but, in a strange sort of way, spiritually. People seeking after God, which they are created to do -- in the awareness of their own, and even their powerful country's, sudden vulnerability. Asaph chose to go to the sanctuary to find understanding; he sought the wisdom that God has promised to those who ask Him for it. Acknowledging his own weakness and limitations, he prayed and asked God to help him, to give him strength -- to grant him wisdom, courage, peace, and even joy.

You and I have that same choice. We can go our own way and try to figure everything out apart from God. We can suppose that we really are, in our puny human strength, sufficient for these things. But even as the towers of the World Trade Center could not withstand the impact of a 767 jet loaded with fuel, neither can you make sense, obtain strength, get wisdom or find meaning in life apart from God. It is not possible.