Patriotic Thought for 4th of July 2011
07/01/2011 06:13 a.m.
Patriotic Minute (Plan B)
Beaver Ward 4th of July 2011

I was a little boy in the 1950’s, and one of our favorite games was “war.” And we knew about war; this was only about 10 years after the end of World War II, and though we hadn’t witnessed the war ourselves, we had heard stories about it; not necessarily from our fathers or grandfathers who had fought in the great wars--my own father, for example, never spoke of his war experiences until many decades later--but as children we heard about the war from our mothers, who had read of its horrors in letters from loved ones, who had seen its atrocities in news reels, or had heard of its awful truths over the radio.

My father fought in Europe. In my mind I had a vision of him in those foxholes we’d seen in war movies, somewhere in Germany. The Germans were the enemy, surely the fighting was in Germany. But years later, when I was a missionary in the southern most part of the Netherlands, I found out that those foxholes where my father had spent that cold “Hungry Winter” of 1944-45, were not Germany at all, but just across the border from Germany in that same part of the Netherlands where I was serving. My father’s battlefield was now less than 30 years later, my mission field. I too was serving the people whom he had served.

Some years later, I had the opportunity to visit with my father and mother that immaculate American Cemetery near Maastricht where the fallen from those battles were buried. Later, we also stood on that road beside the Rur River in Germany, where in March of 1945, American blood had literally flowed in the mud. And I heard my father speak of the events of that terrible but decisive battle that broke the German strength and allowed the Second Army to rush onward toward the Rhine, and finally in May to the Oder River where the German command surrendered to the Americans, bringing the war in Europe to an end.

Again, in a relatively short time, less than 30 years, my father’s battlefield had literally become my mission field. Two generations of an American family rescuing and blessing people, in this case the people of the Southern Netherlands, but rescuing and blessing in two very different ways. And surely it’s only a matter of time until this same American miracle will happen in Iraq, in Afghanistan, perhaps Libya, and any other country where Americans are called to serve.

“Oh beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved, and mercy more than life!
America! America! My God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness, and every gain divine.

“Oh beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God shed his grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.”
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