Ensign: My Father On D-Day
AN
ENSIGN ON THE MOUNTAINS 6 June 2013
Strictly
speaking, my father Robert Alvin (1926-2006) was not
at the initial landings off the coast of France into Nazi-occupied
Europe that began the Allies' Operation Overlord. Those landings on
five separate beaches are together known as D-Day, and we honor the
sixty-ninth anniversary of that event today. My father arrived six
days later (D+6, or June 12, 1944) and – this is what I remember
him telling me – he was the driver for the Army inspector general
and then in the first American army unit to march under the Arc de
Triomphe at the liberation of Paris, then in Patton's Third Army at
the Battle of the Bulge, and then training stateside in Colorado for
the planned land invasion of Japan … then the atomic bomb was
dropped, and World War II officially ended.
A
little long to open today's message with, but it's not off target at
all. For like those who think of themselves as freethinkers and
descendants of those who died in Nazi concentration camps (not only
Jews, incidentally; other than two-thirds of European Jews in the
1940s comprising about six million people, another five million
homosexuals, political prisoners, gypsies, and other subhumans to the
ultra-nationalistic mindset of World War Two Germany ended their
lives in gas chambers), those who ask “where was God doing the
Holocaust” are missing the point. We have our own tragedies today;
perhaps they don't lead to mass extermination – and I'm sounding a
little cold and clinical saying this, please forgive me – but they
lead us to question. “Is this all that I am? Is there nothing
more?”
Does
it surprise you that Jesus asked questions? Not only when He was in
the temple at Jerusalem as a twelve-year-old (“sitting in the midst
of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.” Luke
2:46) but when He began to teach as well; the most obvious ones
coming to my mind are the question at the end of the parable of the
Good Samaritan (“Which … was neighbour unto him that fell among
the thieves?” Luke 10:36) and Jesus' healing of the ten lepers
(“Were there not ten cleansed? But where are the [other] nine?”
Luke 17:17), but there's many more. The one standing out to me today
– and there's a lesson in this, is Jesus' own question to God on
the cross.
MY
GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?
Matthew
27:46. It's also appears at the beginning of Psalm 22; though those
of us in church may only hear it on Good Friday it behooves all of us
to see, that while we are not without sin, even Jesus Who died on the
cross for the sin we did, have, and will commit – the voluntary
acts of separation from God in heaven – could still at His darkest
hour ask questions of God. We can ask questions of God our Father and
it doesn't cast us out of fellowship with Him. I can be nervous and
freaked out at getting a cat scan and an EEG done next week for the
first time since I was a kid (I think). It seems a small thing to
pray for, recovery and healing, to ME but it can mean the
world to those who pray. That's what we have to see; how many do you
imagine prayed for D-Day to be successful?
Since
1944 D-Day's been studied and wargamed by different armies with the
general result that it should have failed dramatically; the overall
commander Dwight Eisenhower even wrote a note that would have gone
out to the parents and relatives of all the soldiers had the Normandy
landings failed. But it did not fail. Even if history is not quite
our cup of tea, the fact that D-Day DID succeed, and my Father in
heaven was there and is always wherever you and I are, in our joys
and sufferings, in our trials and tribulations, has changed and can
still change our world and make it possible for us to fully live
within it, to have life and have it more abundantly.
Now
let's live it,
David
P.S.
I write this weekly devotional to keep in touch with all of you in my
address book, and I hope to be an encourager too! If you find that
I’m not or you want me to get lost, just let me know, thank you!
We
praise You, Lord, for this beautiful day You have given us! Please
pray with me for the peace of Jerusalem on both sides of the fence
and for physical and spiritual communities around our world.
Lord,
we need Your strength to fight the natural disasters and human ills
to ultimately treat the cause and not just the symptoms; until we who
have power change, this world You have made us stewards of won’t
either.
Thank
You, Lord, for all those in leadership and service here and abroad.
Thank You for the opportunities we have been given as well as the
promise of new life through Your Son. And may we all seek and have a
blessed week! Amen.
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