The True Hope of Christmas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7670CXvPX0

It is a beautiful song with even greater strength when we understand the story behind it.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the poem that became this song on Christmas day of 1864.  The end of the Civil War was still several months away.  His oldest son had been injured in battle, and his wife had died just three years prior.

Many of us would struggle with finding praise for God with those issues around us—death, injury and war.  And yet Longfellow finds hope in God.

The verse that he is referring to is from the King James Version of Luke 2 where we read, “¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ¹⁴Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

Although we may desire peace on earth, according to W. J. Durant, from 3421 years of documented history, there are only 268 years without war.  This would also demonstrate that there is generally no “good will” between men.

However, it is possible that there was a different point that the angels were making.

A more accurate translation is found in the Holman Christian Standard Bible, “Suddenly there was a multitude of the heavenly host with the angel, praising God and saying:  ¹⁴ Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to people He favors!”

The context of this statement comes from the angels announcing that God has chosen again to remind us of His presence in our lives and our world.  The announcement is to say that God is still in control.

Can a man who has dealt with so much pain sing praises to God again?  Can a Soldier who struggles with present and past battles sing those same praises?

Longfellow was eventually able to say, “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: ‘God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!  The wrong shall fail; the Right prevail, with peace on earth, good-will to men!’”

Our Soldiers can know peace on earth as well.  Maybe not free from physical battle, but we can know peace from the inner battles.  When we trust God with every aspect of who we are, then we will know peace.

We know God’s favor because of the gift of His Son.  Our sound, solid relationship with Christ is the demonstration of God’s favor. 

A Soldier understands the concept of Lordship.  Everyone wants a Savior; but submitting to Lordship is a different challenge.  The Soldier though knows that they cannot control every aspect of an operation.  They must trust those they work with and the orders that they are given.  They must trust that those over them are competent in the design of their plan.  We can all trust that the Designer has a design and plan, and we can leave all of it in His hands.

If we all seek to trust in Christ at the deepest levels of our lives, then we can know peace on earth.  It will be a peace, based on a trust, which rests with our Savior, who was born as a child, announced by angels, and is Lord of all.

Merry Christmas

Testing Out New Technologies

There are some benefits to being in a very rural part of the world. By this I do not mean rural America. I mean rural Afghanistan.
For one thing we did not have to deal with TV commercials. In fact, for the most part, the only time I enjoy commercials is when they are interrupted by the Super Bowl, or on a show that is highlighting the best commercials from around the world. Curiously, I ended up being home on R&R leave for the Super Bowl this year.
However, there is one key negative to being in a very remote corner of the world; we were somewhat out of the loop for news, and especially technology news.  As an example, the "tablet" craze got started just before we left. I can think of only one Soldier who was with us who had an IPad. Many of the phones that we have today were not even on the radar. So I share this to let you know that this is the first blog posting that I am attempting to do from my phone. I hope it goes well. Keeping up (or catching up) with all the technology changes has been a challenge, even if it has been nerdy fun.

New Adventure Possibly Ahead

So I realize that it has been quite a while since I posted anything.

This would of course be due to the fact that I was deployed to Afghanistan for a year, and I did not have access to this page very often.

However, we are now back and I have been given a "heads-up" about the next adventure to come our way.

My family and I have been told that we should expect orders in January for us to report to Camp Casey, South Korea. We are very excited.

Although Korea is a long ways from here, it will be an awesome opportunity for us to experience a different culture, and see the world from a different angle.

What I would like to do with this and upcoming posts, is to relate some of what we are experiencing as this process goes proceeds. Who knows, maybe it can help someone else. Maybe one day you will be moving overseas, maybe even to South Korea.

For now, let me put this out there--you probably have more stuff than you really need. We are learning that quickly as we start thinking about what we are, and are not going to take with us.

Hope to post soon.