As a brief aside, my apologies to all of you who have been waiting on email replies. I'm sure you understand, but I still try to be diligent in this regard. I would appreciate your prayers for my rest. I have been working for about 12 hours a day now for two weeks and its beginning to wear me down a bit. God has certainly sustained me in His abundant grace!
In that vein (which turns my initial remarks into more than an aside), I was reading the beginning of Colossians 2 last night and was struck by God's sovereignty in growing me. As we received Christ, we are told, we should also walk in Him. Sounds like a daunting command, considering that ravages of sin that still afflict our hearts. But then we're told that we're rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith, as we were taught, and are to abound in thanksgiving. The stress is not on our works to maintain our growth, but in Christ's work within us. That then frees us up to abound, because the One whose saving and sanctifying work truly abounds in working in and through us!
In Ragnar's generosity, they offered to print out custom bibs for us with our team names on them. Wanting to add a sober note to this recreational event, I opted for five names that commemorated various people (and our team captains agreed). Here are the names:
Team Flores and Team Aguon--these were two of our dear Task Force Guam soldiers who were lost the month I arrived in Texas for mobilization. I befriended their friends at my old post. I met a cousin of the latter this morning in the motorpool.
Team Greff--this was the last Canadian soldier killed in combat. His name was snatched up by one of the teams right away, as one of that team's soldiers was good friends with this man.
Team Long--this soldier from the IN Guard was killed on their present deployment. Ten soldiers from their unit are spread out through our teams. This is a shout out to their battle buddy.
Team Richard--this is in honor of the little boy, Martin Richard, who was killed at the Boston Marathon by a weapon that is designed to kill soldiers. This attack occurred during one of our final drills before we deployed. The story of this boy touched many of our soldiers. They thought of their families and gained additional resolve to take the fight to the enemy so he doesn't take it the ones we're trying to protect.
May God grant the families of these deceased soldiers that surpassing peace in Jesus Christ that enables frail man to endure the painful shadow of death. And may He do so with the families of the additional handful of soldiers that we lose every month, fighting to maintain the gap between the vulnerable and free and those who would exploit vulnerability and destroy freedom.
