We don't always realize the impact we make on others. Often years, even a lifetime, must pass before we realize the difference we have made in someone's life. Then, by God's grace, we are allowed to see or hear how our life or life's work helped someone.
"Operation Market Garden" of World War II took place in September, 1944. The "Screaming Eagles" of the 101st Airborne were center of a paratrooper task force to secure bridges on the lower Rhine so the Allies could rapidly advance into northern Germany and defeat the enemy. However, miscalculations in landing led to the needless deaths of thousands of solders that day when they landed too far behind enemy lines. Only determination and great sacrifice led to eventual victory.
Fifty years later, Maj. Gen. Robert Dees (101st Airborne, Retired), and a small group of other solders parachuted into the same drop zone near Eindhoven, Holland, to commemorate that terrible day. On that day in 1994 when he landed, a Dutch woman came near and hugged him. Through her tears and an interpreter she told him her story.
In the days before that assault in 1944, the Germans were executing five fathers a day in Eindhoven to keep the population in submission and deter the Dutch underground. On the day this woman's father was to be shot, American paratroopers fell from the sky, saving his life. She learned this from her mother, because this woman had not yet been born. So she was alive in 1994 even though so many others died during Operation Market Garden.
Each person's life is important. Each home is important. Our small but courageous choices - to stand for the truth, to remain committed to one another, to raise a family that honors Jesus Christ, or to do what is right when others are not - all these will yield a victory of some kind. Just like that Dutch woman was alive because her father was rescued by soldiers who lived through a fierce battle, so also the generations we help raise and are part of, will give life to the future church and society and nation.
What battles are you in right now? What bright spots on the horizen do you see that will give people hope? What can you do to help bring victory in the cultural battle for Christian home and family?
[Jesus said] "Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life." (Rev. 2:10)
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