"Then", says Asaph, "I understood their final destiny" (v. 17) Whose final destiny? The wicked. You see, the hijackers only thought their mission had been accomplished, but the American giant has been aroused in a mighty and righteous anger. God may yet choose our nation as His appointed instrument to pour out His wrath upon these radical terrorists and their suppliers. But regardless of what happens -- whether or not there is war -- God is still on His glorious throne. He rules, proclaims the book of Revelation, as "King of the flood forever." The Pentagon may be bombed and burning, the World Trade Center may lay in ruins, but the Almighty Creator and Ruler of the universe -- the King of kings and Lord of lords -- has not been caught off guard by this attack. His divine arm has not been slackened, His glory has not been tarnished or dimmed, nor His power wounded or diminished in any way. He is now, and will be in all of eternity, our great, triumphant, victorious God!

So these hijackers did not, in fact, reach their final destination when they hit their intended targets. But they surely will. They surely will.

And our choice to choose God and His sanctuary will help us to also remain loving, even as we seek justice. Let us remember, as followers of Jesus Christ, that the entire Arab population did not commit this atrocity. When we enter into the presence of God, when we seek His face and His wisdom, we understand that the heart of humankind is, as Jeremiah tells us, "deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it?' And when we go to His sanctuary, when we come honestly before Him, we also understand that this human depravity includes us all. C. S. Lewis was right: "We are fallen creatures living in a fallen world."

And yet, in the wake of this disaster, the incredible displays of courage, heroism, kindness, compassion and generosity by our fellow citizens, remind us that we are, even in this fallen condition of humanity, created in God's divine image. His unmistakable Imago Dei is stamped indelibly on every human heart, no matter how desperately and despicably we may sometimes behave. To God we are nonetheless redeemable. Let's not forget that and, as difficult as it is in this case, let us find a place for forgiveness, for we have been forgiven much.

So let us seek justice but leave vengeance and eternal judgment to our God Who is, as the psalmist reminds us, "altogether just." Let us seek Him and "we shall surely find Him, though He be not far from every one of us." Let us, like the psalmist, choose to know God in His sanctuary. And He will grant us wisdom and true understanding. And courage to face a tomorrow that is very uncertain.

The psalmist faced perplexity, and so do we. The psalmist had a choice and so, too, do we. The psalmist found a hope.... And so can we.

The Psalmist's Hope - And Ours.

In verses 21 and 22, Asaph describes his situation -- and his emotions -- with words that ring true in our own hearts: "my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered; I was senseless and ignorant." That sounds like a lot of Americans this past week -- including many Christians. Grief-stricken and bitter, angry, resentful, bent on revenge. But the psalmist moves quickly, in the closing verses of this profound expression of his experience, to proclaim his hope in God, Who is -- for Asaph and for you and me -- an ultimate hope, an eternal hope, our true hope. In verse 23 he writes, "yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand."