August 8
Roy Campanella was a baseball player during World War II and was one of the first African Americans to play in the major leagues. As catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers, he played in five World Series and was a league All-Star eight times. In 1958 his career ended when he was paralyzed in an auto accident. While going to therapy every day at the Institute of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in New York City, he noticed a bronze plaque on the wall inscribed with a poem written by an unknown Confederate soldier. After reading it twice, he was filled with “an inner glow that had me straining to grip the arms of my wheelchair.”319
If we can look at our trials in life as opportunities to grow closer to God and to be a more effective witness for him, then truly every trial can be a blessing, to ourselves and to others. The courage to adopt this attitude doesn’t come from within. Only in Jesus Christ can we find the inner resources to lead such a life.
That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
August 9
Couples separated by the war were affected in different ways. Some could not stand the strain. Fortunately, some not only endured but even grew stronger. Relying on God and their faith, Ruth Kwall and Joseph Portnoy remained true to each other through a long engagement. When Joseph could get a three-day pass they were finally married in 1943. Ruth wrote a letter affirming where the strength in their relationship came from:
I want to tell you again, more surely than ever, that no matter how long or hard the siege may be I’ll wait for you forever. I know, and darling you must too, that God in heaven will guard this precious thing and help preserve it and us for a time when the world will need tangible examples to show it that war does not end things; that good, beautiful emotions live on forever. I’m nineteen, Joe, but I know deep down inside me that the emotion I feel, that we feel is older, is mature that it has made me grow to more of the sort of person you’d have me be. War isn’t funny and I know we’ll be tested even further than we ever dreamed could be possible.321
Echoing these feelings, Joseph responded, “You are wise to rely on your complete faith that everything will turn out right for us, and knowing that you think like that, I also feel free to exercise my faith.”322 This couple is a living testament to a great spiritual truth: if two people strive to grow closer to God, they will inevitably grow closer together. As they put God at the center of their relationship, Ruth and Joseph Portnoy experienced a deepening of their love in spite of the hardships and separation of wartime.
And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.
August 10
World War II was the first war in which radio played an important role in civilian and military communications. The science of sending code and voice transmissions through the airways was pioneered in the early 1900s, and the first commercial broadcast stations were licensed in the 1920s. One of the earliest practical uses for this new technology was communication with ships at sea, making the U.S. Navy an early and vigorous proponent of its military use. By the early 1940s commanders were able to stay in regular although sometimes tenuous contact with their ships and units around the globe. Within the civilian community, families gathered around their radio sets to be entertained and to hear the latest news of the war.
The following prayer was written by a well-known Navy chaplain in 1944 giving thanks for this marvelous invention:
Infinite God, who hast founded the known upon the unknown, and hast hidden the secrets of Thy universe beneath the twin cloaks of silence and invisibility: Who has dared Man to divine the meaning that there lies hidden, and has made Man of such a disposition that he can find no satisfaction as long as there remains one unanswered question: We thank Thee for the mind and spirit, the indefatigable energy and the questing intelligence of those scientists and technicians in physics and electricity, who took Thy cosmic dare, and by the force of their insatiable curiosity and their persistent imagination made possible radio communication and brought forth from the silence of electricity the beauty of sound and from the invisibility of light the beauty of color. Thou who hearest our unspoken prayers across the unimaginable abyss of eternity; we thank Thee for all those who have helped Man to enter into communication with Man across the echoless miles with a wonder and fidelity that is akin to prayer.
