Growing up in Winnsboro Texas, I attended Memorial Junior High School. I had no idea why our school was named "Memorial." I knew very little about our facilities save that our cafeteria was built in 1912, the year the Titanic sank. (My kids probably think I was present at the dedication ceremony.) I believe I was an adult when I discovered that my junior high school received its name to commemorate the deaths of those young men from Winnsboro who died in “The Great War” -- World War One.
Recently, a wonderful couple in our church named Harvey and Lucile Grant gave me the book on tape, The Century, by Peter Jennings and Todd Brewster. I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to it, so much so, that I checked out the companion TV series produced by ABC News and the History Channel.
This week, I have been watching the episode dealing with World War One. I was struck by the horror of that war. It was supposed to be the war to end all wars. I saw fresh faces of so many noble young men, who went off to fight but who never returned. So much promise, so much potential, so much hope for their futures, and all was wiped out.
Death to the young is always sad -- especially when it comes at the price of war. In an ironic and sad statement to human nature, it has become more difficult to remember the dead of the First World War because we have had so many wars since. Yet so much of our greatest poetry was written during that era to honor the dead.
I had faintly recalled hearing of the one entitled “I have a Rendezvous with Death”:
…But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
I have a Rendezvous with Death.
I did not remember that it had been written by Alan Seeger. Seeger was a Harvard graduate, who had become a writer and, as a young man, joined the French Foreign Legion in 1914, in order to fight in the great war of Europe. He had written his prescient poem in 1915. Sadly, Seeger was killed on July 4, 1916.
One my personal favorites is a poem called "To An Athlete Dying Young.” Although, written by A. E. Housman in 1896, it gained its popularity during World War One as Europe mourned the loss of a generation of its youth:
To An Athlete Dying Young
THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
The most haunting poem of that era was an anonymous one. It is inscribed on a modest headstone of the grave of one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. His name was Hobey Baker. He was a Princeton graduate. He is the only athlete ever elected to both the College Football Hall of Fame and the Hockey Hall of Fame. His hockey records lasted for decades. Today, college hockey's equivalent of the Heisman Trophy is called The Hobey Baker Award.
Baker volunteered to serve in World War I. He was one of the first to fly an airplane in war. Tragically, he crashed to his death in Toul, France. He left behind many grieving family members, friends, and fans. We do not know who the author was, but this is the poem written on Hobey Baker’s tombstone:
YOU SEEMED WINGED, EVEN AS A LAD,
WITH THAT SWIFT LOOK OF THOSE WHO KNOW THE SKY,
IT WAS NO BLUNDERING FATE THAT STOOPED AND BADE
YOU BREAK YOUR WINGS, AND FALL TO EARTH AND DIE,
I THINK SOME DAY YOU MAY HAVE FLOWN TOO HIGH,
SO THAT IMMORTALS SAW YOU AND WERE GLAD,
WATCHING THE BEAUTY OF YOUR SPIRITS FLAME,
UNTIL THEY LOVED AND CALLED YOU, AND YOU CAME.
Extraordinary, isn’t it? Such is the power of poetry dedicated to help humanity remember those lost in The Great War. Sadly, we are forgetting their names. It is not with intention. Rather, so many have died since then, and the numbers are overwhelming. They are becoming unknown to us, just like the soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.
On November 11, 1921, an unidentified soldier who had been killed in France during World War One was buried in, what would later become, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Later, the bodies of two other unknown soldiers would be buried there as well: one from World War II, the other from the Korean War. (A fourth soldier from the Vietnam War was buried in this tomb. Later, his remains were identified and removed to be buried according to his family's wishes.)
I have traveled to The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It was an unforgettable experience and the memory still moves me today. I appreciate what Memorial Day and The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier represent. They represent our desire to recognize the relevance of the human being. Even if we do not know who they are, we want to declare their value.
More on this at the end of this blog.
Through Painted Deserts
Yesterday I turned in my final grades for my students at ETCA. They graduate tomorrow. The school asked all teachers to wear their graduation gowns. I spent some good coin last year buying my doctoral graduation gown. I am delighted that at least once a year, I am called to wear it.
One of the final assignments I gave my students was to read a spiritually oriented book, mark up the parts that caught their attention by placing an “A” (agree) or a “DA” (disagree) beside their highlighted passages, and then write a one to two page reflection paper over the reading.
The beneficial thing for me was to view the highlighted comments in their books. They revealed what my students found interesting. Most of the books I had read. One I had not read was Through Painted Deserts. The author was—you guessed it—Donald Miller.
Through Painted Deserts is actually one of Miller’s earlier works. After the popularity of some of his other books, namely, Blue Like Jazz, Miller finally found a publisher. Through Painted Deserts chronicles the road trip that Miller and a buddy take through the American Southwest.
I have started reading it and have found some intriguing passages. For example:
“If I do lose faith, that is if I do let go of my metaphysical explanations for the human experience, it will not be at the hands of science. I went to a Stephen Hawking lecture not long ago and wondered about why he thought we get born and why we die and what it means, but I left with nothing, save a brief mention of aliens as a possible solution to the question of origin. And I don't mean anything against Stephen Hawking, because I know he has an amazing brain and I know he has explained a lot of the physics of our universe, but I went wondering about something scientific that might counter mysterious metaphysical explanations, and I left with aliens….
"...[T]he idea of accidental propulsion was beginning to weigh heavy on my mind, both as an explanation for our existence and as a motive for philosophical suicide, a faulty rotted why holding up the meaningless how. And to put a point on it, here was the greatest physicist of our age, a man who could recite more than 75 pages of theory to his assistant from memory. A man who discovered and explained much of the physical behavior of matter at the openings of black holes, a man on par with Einstein himself, explaining that one possibility for the creation of our universe might be a cosmic seed planted billions of years ago, set in motion by an advanced species of aliens."
"It turns out the droplet of our knowledge is a bit lost in the ocean of our unknowing. So much so we are still stabbing at fairy tales. And what I really mean by this is that science itself is not capable of presenting a why. That is, in order to subscribe to a why (an objective rather than subjective why) you have to subscribe to some sort of theory God or aliens. And yet the mind needs a why, just as the body needs food.”
--Through Painted Deserts, pg. 25-6. (Blue emphasis mine)
I believe science concerns itself with the question of “how.” The Bible concerns itself with the question of “why.” Sometimes, scientists get themselves into trouble by making their theories of the origin of the world a melding that addresses the question of “why” as well as “how.” That is typically the point we as Christians feel frustration. We feel that the scientists have overstepped their boundaries.
Likewise, Christians who spend as much time addressing the question of “how” as they do the question of “why” often frustrate scientists. They feel that Christians have overstepped their boundaries.
Preaching in the 21st Century
Have many of you have ever heard of Walter Scott? Some of us are in Christ today because of Walter Scott. He lived in the 1800s and he made his mark by going around to different areas on the frontier and evangelizing. And guess how he did his work? He did not begin by getting behind a pulpit and preaching.
No, he went to the schools in the towns that he would visit, and he would talk to the children on the playground. (I guess he would get arrested today for doing this!) He would teach them to remember something using the five fingers of the human hand: thumb—faith, forefinger—repentance, middle finger—confession, fourth finger—baptism, and fifth finger—the gift of the Holy Spirit.
These kids would go home and teach their parents what they had learned. Their parents would come out and see the one who so effectively inspired, motivated, and enlightened the minds of their children. As a result, thousands of adults responded to Christ in repentance, confession, and baptism. Question: were those people better off for hearing this message, first delivered in such an untraditional way? Would it have been better for Walter Scott to have preached his message in a more traditional way, behind a pulpit, and have fewer responses to his message?
I believe that we need more Walter Scotts today. Recently, a realization struck me in a very sober way. I realized that the bulk of the Bible study supplement that many of our members were receiving was coming on Sundays alone. Moreover, it came in the form of three “lectures”: two done by me and one by their Bible class teachers. (I know we have some who go to other Bible studies; I also realize some meet in homes in small groups. However, a significant amount of people received their Bible supplement on Sundays through “lectures”.)
One of the recommendations for working with the younger generation coming from the new book, Grown Up Digital, is this: cut back on lectures. Make learning more collaborative.
That is what MIT is doing. In a recent article in the March, 2009, edition of Campus Technology, Katherine Grayson writes about the strategic approach that MIT is taking concerning their freshman introductory physics classes. Instead of placing 300 freshman in a classroom for a fifty minute lecture, they are now requiring those students to attend a small, interactive group-learning-based class.
Check out the before and after stats. In the lecture days, the student failure rate was typically ten to twelve percent. (Attendance typically dropped to less than fifty percent.) Now, the failure rate is four percent. Students are enthusiastically participating in group oriented classes that include new technology, professor input, and collaboration.
These are our nations’ best and brightest students. If they struggle with learning and motivation in an environment dedicated exclusively to lecture, what does that say about our preaching?
God made us to possess five senses. Should our preaching address only one—hearing?
Five things I think I think (a tip of the hat to Peter King for this idea)
1. The children and I saw Star Wars Episode III last weekend. I thoroughly appreciate the way the first three episodes of Star Wars addresses the steady descent of Anakin Skywalker into evil. You see him wrestle with pride, anger, vengeance and fear. You see his descent take time. I have seen this kind of descent in real life. These episodes are good reminders of how the inner attitudes affect our outcome. We all hold the capacity to commit acts of evil—or even to become evil.
2. Is it just me, or does Fox’s Major League Baseball World Series’ theme, written by Jochen Flach, and James Blunt’s song, “You are Beautiful”, sound like the same song? Listen to both of them on YouTube. You decide.
3. I think I am going to save my money and buy a DVD recorder next month. I am too far away from being ready for the Terabyte hardrive. For this reason, the DVR or TIVO doesn’t really meet our family’s needs right now. First the Terabyte, then the DVR.
4. Is there a better TV theme song than Hawaii Five-0?
5. I love Memorial Day weekend.
It’s Friday, But Sunday’s Coming
Tommy Nelson, a few years ago, called my attention to the spectacle that I had seen when, as a boy, I visited The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery. Keep in mind, within the tomb lies the remains of a soldier from World War I. He came home to no one. No one knew who he was. No mother, father, or widow received the American Flag in his honor. He returned to no one who had known him and loved him.
For this reason, our military, our leaders, our nation, in 1921, made a major decision. They chose to honor this man, this common man, not the most gallant or heroic man, they chose to honor this common man with the highest of all honors our military can bestow.
The leaders of our nation chose to assign a sentinel at that coffin of that unknown soldier. They chose to symbolically offer him a 21-gun salute. The twenty-one gun salute is the highest honor given any military or foreign dignitary. To symbolically offer this highest honor, they ordered the Army’s very best soldiers, to march 21 steps south, and, on the 21st step, to turn and face the tomb for 21 seconds. After that, orders were to turn and march 21 steps north, and again face the tomb for 21 seconds. The sentinels were ordered to repeat this procedure over and over until relieved at a guard change.
These solders were to guard this tomb, in this way, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They were to guard the tomb in the presence of great crowds, or at night—alone. Whether under a blazing sun, driving rains, or freezing snow, they were to perform their duty with great precision and military bearing. The only exception was to be when weather conditions, such as tornadoes, placed the sentinels in high risk of injury or death.
Do you know there has now been a sentinel on duty in front of the Tomb every minute of every day since 1937? I have been to the tombs of some of our greatest Americans. I have been to the tomb of Abraham Lincoln, I have been to the tomb of George Washington, and I have been to the tomb of John F. Kennedy. None of them had soldiers guarding their tombs. Our government reserves its highest honor for the American that no one knows.
Do you know what the inscription says on The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? It says, “Known but to God.” It is emblematic that in our humanity, in some of our more noble moments, we demonstrate a yearning to share a connection with the common man who is like us. We want to know him and to honor him in our limited, human way.
What if God were to feel the same about us? Guess what—he does.
In our limited mortality, we can scarce approach the majesty of honor and blessings that God bestows upon those who belong to him. One of my favorite scriptures is this, “Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints” (Psalm 116:15). Throughout the ages, there have been burial locations with the bodies of God’s people whose inscriptions would say, “Known but to God.” However, knowing God and being known by Him was enough.
When you belong to God, you can rest assured that God will never forget you. There are no unknown soldiers to God. As the inscription testifies, even the unknown soldier is known to God. God knows those who belong to Him. He knows them by name. He will never let them go. And in my mind’s eye, when I see the tomb of God’s saints, I see sentries of angels guarding their tombs, even against the Devil himself! “The Archangel Michael, who went to the mat with the Devil as they fought over the body of Moses…” (Jude 9—THE MESSAGE).
Enjoy the Memorial Day holiday. Remember the dead who blessed our nation. Most importantly, if you are in Jesus, remember and enjoy the fact that you are God’s.
Have a great weekend!
No comments:
Post a Comment