Thankful Day 11

A BIG THANK YOU to all our Veterans! Your service is so appreciated. I am especially grateful to all of my friends and family members who have served our country both stateside and overseas.

On a very personal note, I am so thankful that the Lord saw fit to spare my brother's life as he served in Afghanistan, near the Pakistani border. You see, on the last day of his service over there, Nathan was in a 5 hour firefight and his team took two hits from missiles that had a 30-yard kill radius. They should have all been dead on the first hit but they survived two hits.

Nathan with his Daughter

Nathan prayed that morning. He sensed something was coming that day and was the first one geared up and ready before they were attacked. He prayed over each man in his unit. His squad leader was hit hard enough in the attack that he passed command onto my brother because he was not feeling in his right mind. Nathan continued to lead the mortar team and they retook the base that had compromised their position. The team has suffered concussions, scratches and one man lost an eye, but the two missiles that should have killed them all did not succeed in doing so.

Nathan has recounted this story to me a few times. He tells it with a reverence for what he feels was the protection from the Lord. He said that though he was thrown back during each explosion, and he did black out twice, he remembers feeling like he was moving surrounded by a bubble of protection. Sometimes things happen that are not logical, that cannot be explained by physics. We choose to believe it was a miracle.

As I listen to this story, to his testimony, I am reminded of a story my mother told me of her father, my grandfather, during World War II. My grandfather, Mario, was part of the underground resistance in Italy during the invasion by the Germans. As a young soldier, before he met and married my grandmother, he worked to smuggle jews out of Italy and other covert operations. There is a story my mother tells us about one night where divine intervention saved his life.

He was trying to get across town in the cover of night, after curfew. If he had been caught he would have been arrested and possibly recruited against his will into the Italian army in the service of Hitler. He was walking down an alley through a town he was familiar with, as he was carefully staying in the shadows, he passed a corner and he heard a voice: (translation) "Mario, over here!" He obeyed the voice and went to look behind a shed. Just at that moment a pair of German guards came through the alley on their patrol. There was nobody else behind the shed. Mario was hidden from getting caught but there was nobody from whom the voice might have come.

Though he wasn't a veteran of our country, my Nonno (grandfather) Mario also fought for freedom and against tyranny. Let us all remember the service of these men and women but also stop to pray for them because the Lord does watch over them and guides them. Though believers need not fear death, if they are spared, then I like to think that the Lord still has a purpose for them. Pray for them.