Sunday, July 02, 2006

Sunday thoughts

We went to church this morning, the Sunday before July 4th. The music director picked one of my favorites, the Battle Hymn of the Republic. As I sang those familiar words, I teared up just a bit, remembering that we are involved in a war not unlike the one that inspired the words to that iconic hymn.
I have seen Him in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.
I too have seen Him in the hours before battle, when men make their peace before whatever entity they worship. There are no atheists in foxholes.

I am reminded that in this war, we are engaged with an implacable enemy who uses a faith in God to justify unspeakable horrors upon a civilian population. An enemy who hides behind the very populace he seeks to enslave. An unholy enemy who distains common conventions and declines to wear a uniform. An enemy who attacks from ambush and refuses to come out and fight. Unless my Army has changed very much since the days when I passed the guidon to the younger soldiers, then they are indeed building alters in the evening dew and damp, to sustain the souls of men who may very soon meet their God.

This, then, is my prayer.

Oh Lord, my friend.
Look after the warriors who wear the flag of our nation so that they may go about your work, freeing an enslaved people. Grant them your mercy and your succor so that they might know your peace. Keep them close to your bosom and safe in your word so that they might return safely to their families and loved ones.

As to our enemies, who also claim your protection. Ignore their heathen prayers and grant them vexation and confusion on the battlefield. Add chaos to their planning and mass them before our guns so that they might properly feel the wrath of our God. Apportion them for foxes and grant American forces the victory they so righteously deserve.

Thy will be done.

3 comments:

Rivrdog said...

Our Sheriff's Office had a few lay preachers, and even two who left copping to be full-time ministers.

I don't think any of them ever came up to your standard of prayer, Padre.

fuzzbert_1999@yahoo.com said...

I second that comment and say Amen!

You're starting to be a regular of mine - hate ruts, but sometimes they lead you to the right place.

Anonymous said...

I had a similar experience this holiday. While singing the "Star Spangled Banner," I started thinking about the third verse that we don't sing any more and how applicable it was to our post-911 world:

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has washed out their foul footstep's pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.