I doubt even Mike Tyson would try to bite the New York cop
I met the other night. He was big and black and grizzly and
he prayed a lot. He's with half a dozen NYPD men and women
who are on tour to promote Jesus after September 11. I
think I caught his name from down here, and it sounded something like Max. I
know everyone in Ibiza feels safe from terrorists, but so did New Yorkers. They
finished up writing farewell notes to their loved ones and scattering them from
the Twin Towers. Max found a tear-stained message like this blowing in the wind. Then
there were the shoes. Hundreds of them, Max said. They were littered down all
the streets leading away from Ground Zero. People just ran away and their shoes
came off and they didn't seem so important when you thought you were going to
die. He said he found a complete office worker's outfit,
shirt still buttoned, trousers with the belt still fastened and a wallet in the
back pocket. But there was no body to match, just the clothes. He couldn't figure
that one out and other salvagers said they found the same. The
six men and one woman officer are doing a tour at the invitation of a Greater
Manchester Police Superintendent who was teaching over there at the time. They
were already members of a Christian Officers' group and now they have a real-life
and salvation message to impart. They pack churches everywhere and get a lot of
applause. What does God say about all this, he was asked.
He said we were only halfway through the story and we wouldn't know the ending
until Jesus came back and he was sure it was going to be a good one. At
least New Yorkers were now talking to each other, he pointed out. Non-believers
always asked questions like this and they just didn't realise that people had
a choice and some of them chose evil. Would he be going
back to work? He didn't know except he said God was finding work for him now.
He said they had distributed ten thousand Bibles among the curious people who
came to stare and none had come back. That night, on September
11, he met one lady who was still limping around at 10pm asking if it was OK to
get her car from the World Trade Center car park. He tore up her parking ticket
and told her she didn't have a car anymore and she stumped off saying she had
never met such a rude cop. Everyone looked at them in awe
and craned to see if there was any identifying sign that showed they had lived
through America's worst atrocity. But mostly they were laughing and cracking jokes
and selling books. What was the worst moment? Three months
was a long time and they had to think back. It was all bad, Max said. You had
to remember that everyone thought something else was about to happen amid the
dust that showed no sign of settling. Nobody worries so
much about his or her gas bill these days, he added. You had to get things in
perspective. Nobody volunteers for overtime any more. And
they don't go for a drink after work, either. They just want to go home to their
families and Jesus would approve of that. Then the biggest
policeman I've ever seen shook a little and I thought he was going to cry and
so I went home as fast as I could.
|