USS TEXAS

The Battleship Texas led the naval bombardment off Omaha Beach. Its 14-inch guns blasted the gun positions at the top of Pointe-Du-Hoc, moving to inland targets at 0630 when the 2nd Ranger Battalion was scheduled to hit the beach and begin the assault up the cliffs.

The flag flown on that vessel, on that Day of Days, is on display now at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum. It's a good thing there were signs warning visitors "Do Not Touch," because I would have wrapped myself in it otherwise.

Yes, it's big. Looks like 7 feet by 12 feet or more. The exhibit also contains a couple flown by Texas regiments at the battles of Antietam and Second Manassas. Amazing.

Ronald Reagan, 6/6/1984:

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge--and pray God we have not lost it--that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt. You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you. The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They thought--or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D-Day: their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we're about to do. Also that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee." These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.

DAY OF DAYS

Visite virtuelle des sites du Débarquement du 6 juin 1944...

Don't miss this site. Make sure your QuickTime is humming and dive in for incredible pictures of D-Day battlegrounds. And check out BlackFive's wonderful collaborative D-Day Commemoration.

I'm going to try hard to work in some Day of Defeat and maybe even Call of Duty this week.

BUILDINGS

Psalm 127

Unless the LORD Builds the House
A Song of Ascents. Of Solomon.

Unless the LORD builds the house,
   those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
   the watchman stays awake in vain.
It is in vain that you rise up early
   and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
   for he gives to his beloved sleep.
Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
   the fruit of the womb a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
   are the children of one's youth.
Blessed is the man
   who fills his quiver with them!
He shall not be put to shame
   when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.

This was the text of this morning's sermon at GHBC. The main focus was on building a Christian home. However verse two is the critical one for us American workaholics.

This past week I made a special effort to come home ON TIME; leaving major tasks at work unfinished. But by Thursday I felt unprepared, my project not moving with the forward momentum we needed with only a few days left before our final deadline. So... late I stayed at my computer Thursday, working until midnight to get all the project update emails I am responsible for compiled and sent, as well as my weekly status report to my boss. I felt guilty the whole time but couldn't see an alternative. Then off to work on Friday -- and I felt confident, all my ducks in a row. I can't say the project is significantly closer to being truly finished, but everyone knows what tasks are left to accomplish with no ambiguity.

So here's the problem: in the short term, this kind of pumping hour upon hour into our work does pay off. We do get ahead. It becomes easy to fall into the seduction of seeing that payoff, which is so visible, and allowing it to feed the next round of temptation. All the while we have ignored the price we have paid, which is not so glaring. Our wives and children are left in a quandry, wanting so strongly to support and encourage us in our vocations, but staring that spiritual and emotional cost right in the face: we are absent. We've made our priorities crystal clear.

God is warning us that the costs of overwork are real and they will build over time. If we harden our hearts and refuse to pay attention, diverting so much energy that should have gone into rest, into time with family, and into time alone with God's word and in prayer, we'll have a house that is simply not built and cannot withstand the withering storms this world brings.

Except the LORD build the house, etc. In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for the Divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favour. To that kind Providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten this powerful Friend? or do we imagine we no longer need his assistance? I have lived for a long time 81 years; and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings, that "Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall proceed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel: we shall be divided by our little, partial, local interests; our prospects will be confounded; and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a byword down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing government by human wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, or conquest. I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers, imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business; and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service. --Benjamin Franklin: Speech in Convention for forming a Constitution for the United States, 1787.

Some take this place in a more particular and restrained sense; as if David would intimate that all their agitations to oppose the reign of Solomon, though backed with much care and industry, should be fruitless; though Absalom and Adonijah were tortured with the care of their own ambitious designs, yet God would give Jedidiah, or his beloved, rest; that is, the kingdom should safely be devolved upon Solomon, who took no such pains to court the people, and to raise
himself up into their esteem as Absalom and Adonijah did.
The meaning is, that though worldly men fare never so hardly, beat their brains, tire their spirits, rack their consciences, yet many times all is for nothing; either God doth not give them an estate, or not the comfort of it. But his beloved, without any of these racking cares, enjoy contentment; if they have not the world, they have sleep and rest; with silence submitting to the will of God, and with quietness waiting for the blessing of God.
Well, then, acknowledge the providence that you may come under the blessing of it: labour without God cannot prosper; against God and against his will in his word, will surely miscarry. --Thomas Manton, 1620-1677.


One important lesson which Madame Guyon learned from her temptations and follies was that of her entire dependence on Divine grace. "I became", she says, "deeply assured of what the prophet hath said, "Except the Loud keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." When I looked to thee, O my Lord? thou wast my faithful keeper; thou didst continually defend my heart against all kinds of enemies. But, alas! when left to myself, I was all weakness. How easily did my enemies prevail over me! Let others ascribe their victories to their own fidelity: as for myself, I shall never attribute them to anything else than thy paternal care. I have too often experienced, to my cost, what I should be without thee, to presume in the least on any wisdom or efforts of my own. It is to thee, O God, my Deliverer, that I owe everything! And it is a source of infinite satisfaction, that I am thus indebted to thee." --From the Life of Jeanne Bouvier de la Mothe Guyon, 1648-1717.

(These quotes come from Spurgeon's Treasury of David .) So what am I thinking? Whose kingdom am I building? Work and the strength to do it well are God's blessings -- will I take them and build a structure that departs from His Will? Can my folly be that great?

Hearing Reagan's speeches on TV this past day, and in every big presidential address, "May God bless America." God has held up his end of that deal. We are blessed above and beyond any society in history. We are so accustomed to seeing our labor pay off fruitfully, it never occurs to us that this blessing can be removed. God let your young men dream heroic dreams -- but let them be YOUR DREAMS and not our own.

Margaret Thatcher said: 'President Reagan has achieved the most difficult of all political tasks: changing attitudes and perceptions about what is possible,' Thatcher said in a tribute to Reagan shortly before he left office. 'From the strong fortress of his convictions, he set out to enlarge freedom the world over at a time when freedom was in retreat -- and he succeeded.' (washingtonpost.com)

A prominent Democratic critic, Sen. Gary Hart (Colo.), said Reagan was politically successful "not because he is the Great Communicator but because he has values and ideas and acts on them."

This evaluation approximated Reagan's own view. "I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference; it was the content," Reagan said in his farewell address as president. "I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation -- from our experience, our wisdom and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries."

Reagan burst into political prominence in 1964 with a rousing nationally televised speech for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater that stressed anti-government themes and portrayed the election as a choice between individual freedom and "the ant heap of totalitarianism."

I always thought of Reagan, while I was a high-schooler, as the Anti-Totalitarian. Whatever his faults and limitations, he made me believe that we were doing everything possible to win against the bad guys, in Russia, Poland, Berlin, Libya, Nicaragua. Among my white middle-class circle of friends, there was no dissent in our boisterous support of Reagan against the criticism of teachers and professors. I never thought of myself as a conservative then, but I couldn't understand the criticism he received for calling the Soviet Union an evil empire. As George Will said on Larry King a little while ago, "both the noun and the adjective were exactly correct." When I found the group that refused to accept that denunciation of Communism, I discovered what I was not, politically.

Update: As I thought about the 'Anti-Totalitarian', I don't mean to say that Carter or other Democrats or Ford didn't oppose the Soviets or didn't treasure representative government; far from it. But there is something to be said for the art of rhetoric. Reagan let us know he had no intentions of losing the cold war.

Another interesting statement I heard from some talking head (maybe Chris Matthews) was that Reagan never saw the job of PotUS as a terrible burden -- he acted like it was a privilege and he seemed to enjoy being the leader of the free world, while not trivializing the great responsibility. That was a big shift after Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter all acted as though the office crushed their spirits.