Given

Last time Kristen and I went to Ritidian (our
favorite beach) we found this little army man buried in the sand.

While it was not a spot that was used as a landing beach during the war, it was cause to ponder again the scenes that must have taken place. The landing craft, the weight of supply packs, razor sharp coral slicing through army boots that were not made for water in the first place. Ceaseless fire raining down from the Japanese in the hills beyond what would have been, on any other occasion, an inviting tropical beach. Sweltering sun, bugs, fear on every side.

It is sobering to try and see the island paradise we live in through the eyes of those to which it was a death trap, a slaughter waiting to happen.

Can we ever partially see or accurately imagine the thoughts and feelings that lived within them? Can we even approach a true understanding of what it was like to set foot on a hostile shore thickly planted with much more hostile enemies?

No. I will never be able to truly understand.

But we can try. We can learn. We can appreciate the gift they have given at a very high price. And I can help others appreciate the gift. The gift of freedom. Freedom to believe, freedom to share, freedom to live out the God that lives in me.

That is what I will be trying to help my students see in a few weeks as we begin studying WWII. We have the opportunity to take a field trip to several sites from the war. What a great chance to be thankful and remember! To make history come alive!

Though it is a sobering subject, especially considering the mixed culture of our island, it is also a wonderful chance to highlight the hand of God in the lives of man. To be able to show my students things that those at home can only see through pictures. I hope to be able to share with them the soldiers and happens of the War, to make them come alive for my students as they have for me in the past months.