Lucky Mud

I am often humbled by the heroics of those who have gone before me. When I read about the soldiers on both sides of the Mason Dixon line who marched across open fields into artillery and entrenched infantry to their certain deaths the magnitude of their bravery goes so far beyond my own comprehension. The same goes for those heroes who stormed Normandy 60 years ago.

Yesterday Peggy Noonan wrote the following words:

Television will be full of reports this weekend of the festivities surrounding the 60th anniversary of D-Day. This has me thinking of why we still talk about the invasion, why television news producers are certain we are interested, and why the programmers of movie channels believe we will want to see "The Longest Day" again, and "Saving Private Ryan."

The Normandy invasion was a great moment in history (brave men joining together to do the right thing) and a definitive moment (the Nazi hold on Europe was loosed; in less than a year Berlin would fall). These are reasons enough.

But there is this, too: We are human and love stories that show humanity as brave and selfless. It exalts us. We need to be exalted. It is hard to get up in the morning and pull on your socks and enter the day. It is hard to be a bus driver. But it is easier when you can think better of your passengers.

When you think man isn't much, when you think human beings are pretty low as beings go, it leaches love from you. It leaches love from your soul when you think we're all nothing much, we're dust in the wind, it's dog eat dog. When you can see us as more than that, it helps you enter each day. It helps you live. We think about D-Day, and Harry the King at Agincourt, and George Meade at Gettysburg, to help us live.

It is amazing that such fallen creatures are capable of anything good. Many who conquered at Omaha Beach were not Christian, just as many who fell there were; yet it is amazing to me that somehow that spark of the Divine that has been placed within us is never completely extinguished until we expire. (Now I’d have to admit that some people do a pretty good job of smothering it, though!)

I guess what I am getting at is “What is man that You take thought of him, And the son of man that You care for him?” (Psalm 8:4) I am staggered by the goodness of God. If only everyone could see this truth about Him. It would be a much better place if those that hated Him would simply give in to His love. (They'd end up in a much better place too!)