Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Wednesday June 16, 2010
Today I am featuring a response to yesterday's letter on facing adversity. I think it is helpful and written by a dear Brother who knows a wee bit about adversity. Here is his response:

Larry;

Your comments about warriors struck a chord of remembrance for me. It was my privilege during the years I spent as a maintenance supervisor at Ford Motor Co. to have a number of war veterans work for me. I was thinking of a trait that these men seemed to share. They were not complainers! Even when life seemed terribly unfair, they seemed to have an attitude that this wasn't that big of a deal; things could be worse.

Jim McMillan was one of these men. I came to have a real admiration for Jim, and told him so on several occasions. Jim had been in a landing craft on the morning of June 6, 1944. He told me how he had sat in the boat with the other men in his unit; men he had spent so much time with in England. There had been so much waiting, and waiting, and then... That morning everything moved so very fast. He was sitting there, listening to the constant booming of the big guns on the ships around them. And there was all the noise from other weapons being fired from the shore - German weapons! He said every man was thinking the same thing; will I live through this day? how long will it be until something rips through my flesh? will I die fast, or much too slowly?

There was a sudden, grinding bump! They were on shore! The front of the craft dropped down, and they could see Omaha Beach, and just above it, on the high ground, bursts of fire, and the rising smoke of guns firing down upon them. Jim told me how he and his buddies all rose in unison, and ran toward their enemies. He remembered getting his feet to the dry sand, and firing a couple of shots at the hill in front of them. And then, a terrible explosion in his head!

He regained consciousness in a white hospital room in London. A German bullet had passed through his teeth, and then through the back of his neck, without striking the spinal cord, a vertebra, or any other critical organ. He spent a long time in the hospital, then was returned to America. The best he could reconstruct it, his active combat time was around 20 seconds; long enough to reorder his entire perspective on life. Jim's attitude toward life was: give me the toughest punch you've got; I'll deal with it, with no complaints.

Jim was one of the great men I've had the privilege of knowing.

Dave.

Thank you, Dave, for this gripping, true story. I have known men like Jim and some who suffered in German, Japanese and Korean POW camps. They seldom complain as you noted about Jim. One man who worked in a prison as a guard had survived the Bataan Death March. He would tell stories about this to encourage the young prisoners to learn to suffer and find a reason to keep on living and learning from life's experience, even if the experience be brutal. He had numerous scars from the march and said that he would never be completely healed due to the privation and torture endured during and after the march to prison.

When we think of flowery beds of ease offered by modern Christendom, please consider the recruiting call of Jesus concerning Paul: Acts 9:16 For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2010 Use with credit

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