Blog Your Blessings Sunday

Today being Sun­day, I again enjoyed some time to myself engag­ing in my own form of wor­ship. As I was doing so, my thoughts went to the one and only per­son from my for­mer con­gre­ga­tion that I can truly say I miss.So today, he is the focus of my post about my blessings.The gen­tle­man in ques­tion is 81 years young and I don’t use that cliché lightly. He not only appears and moves as though he is much younger than his chrono­log­i­cal age, he is truly “young at heart” and in spirit. He always has a hug, and words of affir­ma­tion and inspi­ra­tion for those around him.

Like so many of us, he has much to be thank­ful for. You see, my friend is a highly dec­o­rated vet­eran of World War II who fought on Iwo Jima. He was a squadron leader and one of 110,000 Marines dis­patched in 880 boats to invade Iwo Jima in Feb­ru­ary 1945. Shot by a machine gun on March 3, 1945, he fin­ished out his tour of duty as a Drill Instruc­tor for Spe­cial Forces operations.

An extremely hum­ble and unas­sum­ing gen­tle­man, my friend will share his bat­tle expe­ri­ences with you if you ask. His com­men­tary reveals his deeply-held faith in our Divine Cre­ator. He recounts telling his men, just before they landed on Iwo Jima, to keep their eyes open and “stay within your buddy’s sight.” He also coun­seled them to “watch their buddy’s back, as he would be watch­ing theirs.” My friend knew that the enemy sol­diers would be buried in deep “spi­der holes.” Indeed, his­tory shows that on that day there were about 21,000 Japan­ese sol­diers bur­rowed into the vol­canic rock, await­ing the U.S. sol­diers’ arrival.

In answer to the ques­tion of whether or not he prayed dur­ing those days, he responds, “Yes, I prayed all the time for myself — for my own safety and that of my squad.” Trag­i­cally, when the bat­tle was over, how­ever, “there were only two of us left from my orig­i­nal squad, and four of us left from our orig­i­nal com­pany. I still won­der — why was I spared?” He takes com­fort from his faith, stat­ing, “I do know there is a rea­son, and my faith will lead me to it.”

Imag­ine! 81 years old and still fol­low­ing his faith, look­ing for­ward with hope in search of answers to life’s many ques­tions. My friend is a won­der­ful exam­ple of what it means not only to have bound­less faith, but also how a ser­vant lives his life.

After the war ended, my friend and his wife raised a fam­ily and are today enjoy­ing their grand­chil­dren and a great-grandchild. It is no mys­tery to me why his life was spared that day so many years ago. He was meant not only to be a bless­ing to his own fam­ily, but to so many other peo­ple with whom he would inter­act in the com­ing years.

I am one of those lucky folks.

Since I no longer have any involve­ment in tra­di­tional orga­nized reli­gion, I don’t see my friend reg­u­larly or get to make music with him (we were both mem­bers of a band). I miss him, his smiles and hugs, his kind words. I miss the fact that he always had a word of encour­age­ment and care for me. But he con­tin­ues to serve as a bless­ing to me because of the time I was for­tu­nate enough to spend with him and the ongo­ing exam­ple he sets for others.

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