Someone was praying

This Memorial Day we watched a World War II documentary that worked some "deja vu" on me.  The story was about four service chaplains who served aboard a troop transport that was torpedoed and sank early in 1943.  After I finished radio school in Alabama in the fall of that year some of us in that class were sent to a "Com Pool" School up in Connecticut not far from New York City.  It was a six weeks course on ship-to-ship communications in convoy duty using walkie-walkie radio, semaphore flags and signal lights..  After "graduation" we were sent to the Armed Guard Center in Brooklyn, NY, to await further assignment to duty aboard merchant and troop transport ships sailing to either the European or Pacific war theaters.  Armed Guard units consisted of gunners manning 3- and 5-inch and 20 millimeter cannons and, of course, providing radio- and signalmen to bolster the merchant crew.  We did not talk much about which ocean which preferred to serve in, but it sure was not the North Atlantic as the German subs were destroying thousands of tons of shi pping with their prowling "wolf packs" of deadly U-boats.  What a relief it was to learn that our group was being divided alphabetically and all in A to K were being shipped to New Orleans for duty in the Pacitic.  This was not a "piece of cake," however, as my first ship was loaded with bombs, other ammunition and war equipment and headed for New Guinea...and traveling alone without escort or convoy!  I knew about the Lord at that time, but did not know Him personally, and I did have loved ones and friends praying for me back home.  We had some scares on that trip and more later, but the Lord kept me and brought me to faith in Him after the war, for which I praise Him,  I was ready for duty, but not ready for eternity until later.  But, after the war in the Pacific ended in August 1945 I completed my three-year enlistment in the Naval Reserve by serving aboard the USAT President Jackson (a converted cruise liner on the pre-war President Line) and helping to return our troops from the Far East.
The accommodations were similar to those aboard the USAT Dorchester that went down with over six hundred men and with only two hundred being rescued, some of those because four selfless chaplains gave them their own life-jackets!  We don't understand how God works in events like this, but we do know that He gave the victory in World War II, and since.  On this special day we are grateful to Him for those who have served and those who have given their lives to keep America strong and free.  Let all who know Christ as Saviour and Lord "pray for all that are in authority...Who will have all men to be saved..." - I Timothy 2:1-6.

"Kaboom!"

Springtime is always an exciting time in Indiana.  We have had a nice spring so far...only one bad tornado warning ...no funnels sighted.  So we've been blessed, among other things to celebrate Mary K.'s 84th birthday, on April 22.  She's still my "teen bride" and I love her, appreciate her more each day.  She was privilege to take training at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, at the Child Evangelism Training Institute in Muskegon, MI, but she received her "PhD" from the "Whitfield&Gladys Jackson Practical Bible Training College"!  Her mother and father, by Biblical example and precept rooted and grounded her in the Christian faith and prepared her for a lifetime of faithful service for the Lord Jesus Christ.  While I was studying at Moody we chose II Corinthians 6:1 as a life verse:  "We then as workers together..." and that summarizes our 65 years of ministry...and we pray it will until the Lord calls us Home in death or the Rapture!  She grew up on the Jackson Farm (early near Newport, IN, and later just west of Wallace, IN) as a "neglected" child having no TV, only parents who loved and guided her, and chores, including care of animals, to build her body and character!  Taking a stand for Christ in her teens, she maintained to her folks that Wallace .had no datable guys. Well, after the evening that I first took her to church and as she was about to go to sleep in her upstairs bedroom her dad climbed up the nearby windmill and whispered loudly in her open window, "there aren't any boys to date in Wallace!"  Her parents were humble and hard-working (Dad served as deacon at Yeddo Baptist Church), but above all they were faithful prayer-warriors.  We always said that God gave Mom first priority to her prayers...it was "dangerous" to share a burden with her!  We'll never forget her funeral...she and Dad were the last to be allowed interment in the government-protected family cemetery near Newport, and at the graveside service (on Mother's Day in 1980) Pastor had just closed with a benediction, when a loud clap of thunder sounded "kaboom!"...just as if the Lord was saying, "AMEN!" to a life well-lived.  On this approaching Mother's Day, I thank God for my life-long partner Mary K., for her mother, for my mother (Mamaw Grimes who went to be with the Lord in 1987), and for our great daughters, grand-daughters and grand-daughters-in-law and for faithful mothers everywhere.  We pray for you, that God will bless and use you in these confusing times to validate the Biblical institution of motherhood.  Maybe your exit from this old world will not be announced with a literal "kaboom!," but be applauded by Heaven, too, as you remember that "Favour is deceitful and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised!" -- Proverbs 31:1-31(30).