We Can Find a Hope

It is now September 12. All day, I was trying to come up with something to say about 9/11. I came up with nothing. Just like how I felt ten years ago, seeing the live footage of the two towers crashing down, I did not know what to say. I did not know how to pray.

In 2002, a year after the devastating day, An American Requiem, a work composed by Laurey Berteig and Jonathan Lugo was performed at Benaroya Hall in Seattle. The work was a prayer, a mass for the dead. So today, speechless on my own, I would like to share this prayer from An American Requiem.

In a world that seems so cold now that our innocence is gone

We will join our hearts with those that we find near

We will pray for His hand to take hold of what we fear

And believe in what we knew to once be true

We can find a hope, we can find a strength

We can know we're still in his hand and know that there's a plan

Hold on to your faith in Him and you will be strong again

We can know He still loves our land

O God, come and heal our land

Living in the shadows that we cannot understand

We will join our hearts across the land in prayer

We will pray for His grace to heal all that we can't bear

Trusting in His sov'reign hand to help us stand

We will find a hope in Him, we will find our strength to begin

We will know we're still in His hand and know that there's a plan

Hold on to our faith in Him and we will be strong again

We can know He still loves our land

O God, come and heal our land

-Laurey Berteig/Peterson