Peace amidst turmoil comes from faith. If you don’t rely on God or have faith in his sovereignty, then it’s all up to you, and that is absolutely fatiguing. You have to figure it all out and lean on your own understanding. Your hands will fail at the critical moment, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You have very real physical and mental limitations. Simply put, without faith you will fail. Faith allows you to persevere. You will continue to do what you must do, knowing that God is the one in control of what happens.
During that incident outside of Kandahar, I felt like I was completely alone. But I wasn’t ever alone. Even the people who trained me contributed to that success. The men who were not trained medically but were performing medical tasks because I was yelling instruction at them contributed directly to saving lives. There was a lot of noise and a great deal of chaos. But through it all there was an underlying peace that is difficult to explain.
I have been on a few assaults that have lasted many hours. Those situations, just as the tragedy of December 5, simply call for persistence, all the way to the end. You can’t just stop when you meet resistance. Persistence requires faith.
If we found ourselves assaulting a well-defended position, we would use what we had to reduce the target and reduce the threat. Fortunately, we have a lot of combined arms technology, which we can leverage to our advantage. At the end of the day somebody has to go on and occupy the ground. It’s not until you’re there that you can say the enemy no longer owns the objective. To move forward through the barriers and instinct to stop requires more than human initiative can accomplish. And through those times of conflict and struggle in your life, peace is still present if you believe.
Lord, help my unbelief. Help me to move forward through the barriers of life. Help me not to trust my human strength but depend solely upon your strength.
“And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:7)