Landing on the Beach
Wednesday, October 27th, 2004Sorry for those readers who have to endure the Beatles songs playing automatically - I tried to pick one that’s not as loud in the beginning so now you have a chance to turn your speakers down and not be so shocked that you soil your pants.
Anyhow - I’ve been talking to the very distraught Son and I tried to come up with a useful analogy for every day we go through. Call it corny, call it just plain bad - if the analogy works for you, use it, if not, then discard it (this is what C.S. Lewis would say on a theological point).
Imagine that every day we are the troops landing on Normandy beach. Most of them will go out onto the beach and fall, never to fight again. Some of them will survive to make it up the cliffs and clear out the bunkers in the hill. But they only have one chance, and they must all be equally brave and honorable while doing it. But we have a great advantage over the troops - tomorrow we will get up and do it all over again. Some of us will fall more than others - day after day after day. Some of us will fall into a period of utter dismay where we will constantly fall, and we fell like giving up the fight completely.
But we cannot fall all of the time. We will eventually make it up the hill and conquer. Tomorrow we must do it yet again, but we will hopefully remember the path we took to victory.
But we can’t stay in the landing craft - no matter what we do. If we don’t jump out of the landing craft, we are sitting ducks. We have to jump into the water before us. And survive.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2a/NormandyLST.jpeg
