In his book, Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce, Stanley Weintraub tells the true story of one of the most amazing events to occur during wartime. In 1914, the armies of Europe had become bogged down in a new and horrible type of warfare, called trench warfare. Over hundreds of miles, millions of men lived in trenches, trading fire with enemy soldiers as close as sixty yards away. During the first months of the war, the fighting had been fierce, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties.
On Christmas Eve, a group of German soldiers placed some candles on small trees and set them on the edge of their trench. One German soldier began to sing the familiar German carol, Silent Night. Soldiers on the British side responded by singing other carols. Hand made signs offering a truce began to appear up and down the line. Soon men began to venture out into “no man’s land” to greet each other and exchange gifts of chocolate cake, cognac, postcards, newspapers, and tobacco.
It was also a time to bury the dead who up to this point had been unreachable in “no man’s land.” At one point, soldiers from both sides stood around a fresh grave and quoted the 23rd Psalm together. As Christmas day dawned, the truce began to spread up and down the lines. At one point a British soldier pulled out a soccer ball and the Germans proceeded to beat the British in a pick-up soccer game.
Unfortunately the truce was short lived. Within days the war was back with all of its ferocity and violence. Though three more Christmas’s would come and go, there would be no more truces. By the time the war ended in November of 1918, 8 million would die and another 21 million would be wounded.
A relatively unknown Scottish poet Frederick Niven, writing about the event in his poem, A Carol from Flanders, summed up the sentiments of millions in his day and ours:
O ye who read this truthful rime
From Flanders, kneel and say:
God speed the time when every day
Shall be as Christmas Day.
My friend, in the midst of the frustration and business of life, may the Lord grant you a peaceful and restful Christmas, surrounded by family and friends. May the joy of Christ and the hope of the gospel be yours in abundance.
Shoulder to Shoulder,
Gregg
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Friday, December 08, 2006
Dangerous Shortcuts
On November 18, 35 year old James Kim and his family left their San Francisco home for a Thanksgiving holiday trip to visit relatives in Portland, Oregon. On the trip home, they planned to take a shortcut over the little traveled Bear Camp Road through the rugged Oregon mountain wilderness near Rogue River. During the night, they began to encounter heavy snow. Soon their 2005 Saab wagon was stuck and they huddled together for warmth, thinking someone would find them in the morning, but no one came.
For three days they ran the car heater to stay warm and ate what little food they had with them. When the gas ran out they burned all the tires, even the spare, to stay warm. With no more heat and food running out, Kim decided he would leave the vehicle and look for help. He said he would return in five hours, but was gone for two days. On the second day, the vehicle was spotted by a search helicopter and Kim’s wife and his two daughters were rescued. Kim’s body was found about a mile from the vehicle. Gauging by his tracks, he had walked about ten miles in a circle before succumbing to hypothermia.
Speaking with reporters after Kim’s body was found, Terri Stone, an innkeeper at the lodge in Gold Beach, where the Kims were to have stayed the night of Nov. 25, said the Bear Camp Road is shown on some Internet road-direction sites as the best way to get to the coast from Grants Pass, but she advises against it. "It looks like the shortest distance, but it is very, very treacherous," she said.
Sometimes we are tempted to take moral shortcuts in the course of our lives. God’s word warns us, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” Lured by the promise of easy, painless success, men often compromise biblical standards and ignore the internal moral GPS God has given us – our conscience. Paul reminded the Corinthians, “For our boasting is this: the testimony of our conscience that we conducted ourselves in the world in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God, and more abundantly toward you.”
Sadly, we are not the only ones who suffer when we make a wrong moral choice, our families suffer as well. My brother in Christ, today you may be facing a severe temptation to compromise what you know is right, in order to get ahead. May God give you the grace and courage to do the right thing, to make the right choice, regardless of the sacrifice and inconvenience. Your family and friends are watching and counting on you to make the right decision.
Shoulder to Shoulder,
Gregg
For three days they ran the car heater to stay warm and ate what little food they had with them. When the gas ran out they burned all the tires, even the spare, to stay warm. With no more heat and food running out, Kim decided he would leave the vehicle and look for help. He said he would return in five hours, but was gone for two days. On the second day, the vehicle was spotted by a search helicopter and Kim’s wife and his two daughters were rescued. Kim’s body was found about a mile from the vehicle. Gauging by his tracks, he had walked about ten miles in a circle before succumbing to hypothermia.
Speaking with reporters after Kim’s body was found, Terri Stone, an innkeeper at the lodge in Gold Beach, where the Kims were to have stayed the night of Nov. 25, said the Bear Camp Road is shown on some Internet road-direction sites as the best way to get to the coast from Grants Pass, but she advises against it. "It looks like the shortest distance, but it is very, very treacherous," she said.
Sometimes we are tempted to take moral shortcuts in the course of our lives. God’s word warns us, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” Lured by the promise of easy, painless success, men often compromise biblical standards and ignore the internal moral GPS God has given us – our conscience. Paul reminded the Corinthians, “For our boasting is this: the testimony of our conscience that we conducted ourselves in the world in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom but by the grace of God, and more abundantly toward you.”
Sadly, we are not the only ones who suffer when we make a wrong moral choice, our families suffer as well. My brother in Christ, today you may be facing a severe temptation to compromise what you know is right, in order to get ahead. May God give you the grace and courage to do the right thing, to make the right choice, regardless of the sacrifice and inconvenience. Your family and friends are watching and counting on you to make the right decision.
Shoulder to Shoulder,
Gregg
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