Lt. Perry Akin’s first great challenge came within days of arriving in Fallujah in January 2005. One responsibility was looking for IEDs. Perry just about found one in a puddle on a road in the rainy season, but he looked at it and concluded that it wasn’t an IED. A short time later, a Humvee drove over the road, and to the dismay of Perry, there was an IED in that puddle. It destroyed the Humvee, but fortunately, did not kill the driver.
“It was a place where an enemy was sitting with a detonator; he could have easily pushed the button when he saw Perry standing and looking at that puddle,” Akin noted of the close call.
The next great challenge came a few months later when Perry was promoted from second lieutenant to first lieutenant. About this time Congressman Akin was part of a Congressional delegation to Baghdad. Akin received permission to meet with Perry while in Fallujah, his gunny sergeant, the major and lieutenant colonel in charge.
Less than twenty hours later, Akin was on a plane returning to the United States. About the same time, Perry and his men were constructing a roadside guard station. Suddenly mortar rounds started coming in; numerous troops were struck with shrapnel. Perry ran for cover with his gunny when a 120mm mortar round landed ten feet from them. That mortar was the size of a cantaloupe, Akin said, using his hands to illustrate the size by making a circle.
“If it had gone off, I would have been in tiny little pieces, but the round was a dud,” Perry said. Perry’s own words “that his days on earth were exactly as long as the Lord allows them to be” brought comfort. They allowed Congressman Akin to make sense of the miracle.
“It wasn’t God’s time to take Perry. My son had a sense that God had a purpose and a time for all things,” Akin said, reflecting on Ephesians 2:10.
Survival is a mystery. Why do some die while others survive? It’s the question and mystery of the ages. Yet God reminds the living that he has work for them yet to do.
I praise you for those miracles, the blessings of the battlefield. May they remind me of my own purpose, the one you have given especially to me.
“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’S purpose that prevails.” (Proverbs 19:21)