Today is the anniversary of D Day.
To celebrate D Day my brother watched Band of Brothers and my father and I are watching Saving Private Ryan. This celebration seems more like an excuse to put on a good war movie (as if they need one).
So I got to thinking about 2 things. The first is that it is almost July which means that squads D,E,F,and G are about to launch on the World Race. The second is that there is something profoundly special about the bond that people develop with their unit.
Something that I am always astonished people don’t know (until I realize that they did not grow up in a family that talked about history at the dinner table) is that there have been countless D Days in the history of war(s). In fact, every anphibous assault during WWII was called D Day. Their is conflict between military histortians about what D stands for, some argue that it means Day and others argue that it means departure. Either way this is significant. (The national World War II Museum has more information on this).
Weather it means day to help with military code or means departure day, it designates a very specific day and time when a group of soldiers engages in a planned conflict. So the squads DEFG are about to depart on their own personal D Day. There have been D Days in the past and their will be more in the future, but regardless, it is their day where they are heading out.
We will come back to this, but for now let’s jump ship and talk about my second thought, that there is a profound bond between military men who fought together. Here is why this is. When people come together to to complete a task with a common goal, they bond. Add to that the knowledge that the task must be completed together, so a reliance on your teammates creates a bond beyond compare.
In other words, coming together and relying on one another to complete a specific task with a common goal bonds people.
But what does that have to due with Christianity and the impending D Day?
A common theme throughout the Bible is the comparison of Christians to Soldiers. One example is the Armor of God (Ephesians 6:11-17) ect. But that’s not my point. As Christians we are called to “put on the full armor of God” which means that we are to prepare ourselves for battle (much like the thousands of soldiers who fought in D Day and General Patton who served as a decoy). We are called to arm ourselves against attacks from the devil and we are called to go out and reach the world, but known of this we are called to do alone.
We often call the church a family. We are adopted into the family. And we are a family; like men in the military call their men of their squadron their brothers likewise our fellow Christians are our brothers and our squadron who stand with us and fight against the enemy.
The D squad, the E squad, the F squad, and the G squads are about to launch on the world race. They get their own D Day. They are going out as a group of connected by a reliance on one another to solve a common goal and they will come back with a closeness that is special because of what they all did.
But we, as Christians, don’t need the World Race or a short term mission trip to form such close bonds. Like the childhood song goes: I may never march in the infantry/ ride in the Calvary/ shoot the artillery/ but I’m in the Lord’s army. We are all in the Lord’s army and we must build relationships with people who have a similar goal as us, spreading the good news, and with these people how much better will our relationships be? How much more successful will our endeavors be?
We are indebted to the men who served in D Day, they helped the United States remain free and began the process of freeing the French Occupied Zone. And as Christians, we can learn from the service and brotherhood of these soldiers and their gallantry in defending freedom because isn’t freedom what Christianity is all about? Galatians 5:11 and Galatians 5:13-14.
“From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”
William Shakespeare from Henry V
