It is also important to remember that our Lord Jesus taught us an even more expansive view of how we should live in relation to these commands. We are called to fulfill these obligations out of love rather than obedience. When his love fills our hearts, we are able to lovingly bring honor to him, to our parents, and to our families. In love, we will never disgrace his name or our own.
I will put my laws in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
November 8
Kim Malthe-Bruun was a Danish partisan sentenced to die for smuggling weapons to a resistance group. He wrote a last letter to his mother trying to comfort her with his thoughts about life after death:
I am an insignificant thing, and my person will soon be forgotten, but the thought, the life, the inspiration that filled me will live on. You will meet them everywhere in the trees at springtime, in people who cross your path, in a loving little smile. You will encounter that something which perhaps had value in me, you will cherish it, to become large and mature.
I shall be living with all of you whose hearts I once filled. And you will all live on, knowing that I have preceded you, and not, as perhaps you thought at first, dropped out behind you… Follow me, my dear mother, on my path, and do not stop before the end.466
This young man’s expectations are not unlike many today. There is pale hope that something of himself will live on in the memory of others. He knows intuitively that he has thoughts and inspirations that are not going to die. But what happens to them?
We need to appreciate the power of the gospel message to bring hope to those with this mindset. In Christ Jesus we are blessed to know exactly where we’re going. The young man in this story also has an intuition that in dying, he will go ahead of the living to a place where they will eventually come. Vague speculation is not necessary here either. Jesus has assured us: “I am going there to prepare a place for you”(John 14:2). Likewise, I believe it is true that, when our time comes, we in turn go to prepare the way for others. This is our joyful hope in Jesus Christ: he conquered death for us, so that we and our loved ones can be with him forever.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.
November 9
General Patton asked his chaplain a startling question:
“How much praying is being done in the Third Army?” The chaplain admitted that there were probably few prayers being said, other than by the unit chaplains themselves. The general leaned back in his swivel chair, looked at the other man intently, and declared:
Chaplain, I am a strong believer in prayer. There are three ways that men get what they want; by planning, by working, and by praying… But between the plan and the operation there is always an unknown. That unknown spells defeat or victory, success or failure. It is the reaction of the actors to the ordeal when it actually comes. Some people call that getting the breaks; I call it God. God has His part, or margin in everything. That’s where prayer comes in. Up to now, in the Third Army, God has been very good to us. We have never retreated; we have suffered no defeats, no famine, no epidemics. This is because a lot of people back home are praying for us. We were lucky in Africa, in Sicily, and in Italy, simply because people prayed. But we have to pray for ourselves, too.467
There is plenty of room to question General Patton’s theology. To consider praying one of three ways for men to “get what they want” is a very limited view of God and prayer. However, there is not much room to question his sincerity. He was genuinely thankful for the success of his army and mindful that it was not all due to his own military brilliance. General Patton provides a great example of a leader who is able to look beyond himself and to give credit to prayer and to God for his success. While times were good, he looked forward to the trials ahead and urged his men to stay close to God, reminding them and himself that, “We have to pray for ourselves.”
Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.
November 10
On December 8, 1944, General George Patton directed that every man in the 3rd Army pray for cessation of the rains that had bogged down the Allied advance. A chaplain drafted the prayer that was then printed on two hundred fifty thousand three-by-five-inch cards and distributed to the troops:
Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously harken to us as soldiers who call Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies, and establish Thy justice among men and nations. Amen.468
I had always considered this prayer a little bit of semi-sacrilegious theater on Patton’s part, until I read the story of the man who wrote it. Col. James H. O’Neill was chaplain of the 3rd Army and knew General Patton well. He vouched for the sincerity of Patton’s religious belief and of this appeal for God’s help. He considered the general to be a man who, “had all the traits of military leadership, fortified by genuine trust in God, intense love of country, and high faith in the American soldier.”469
Two days after the prayer cards were distributed, the German 6th Panzer Army took advantage of the bad weather and poor visibility, launching their great last-ditch offensive through the Ardennes Forest. After stunning successes in the first few days, the fate of the German advance was sealed on December 20 when the weather cleared, allowing Allied air attacks to turn the tide of the battle. George Patton prayed for clear weather, and he got it at one of the most crucial moments of the war.
He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples.
