{"id":1681,"date":"2022-05-30T08:23:32","date_gmt":"2022-05-30T12:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1681"},"modified":"2022-05-30T08:23:32","modified_gmt":"2022-05-30T12:23:32","slug":"moving-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2022\/05\/30\/moving-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On June 6, 1944 \u2013 D-Day \u2013 Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, to begin the liberation of Europe from Hitler\u2019s Third Reich.
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The beaches were not created equal.\u00a0
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Pointe du Hoc is an imposing limestone bluff between the Omaha and Utah landing sites.\u00a0 Atop its 100-foot cliffs, the Germans installed guns that were capable of lobbing shells into Allied landing vessels more than 10 miles offshore.\u00a0 It fell to a group of 225 U.S. Army Rangers to scale the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc early that morning in order to neutralize that weaponry.
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The Rangers trained for five months.\u00a0 Two minutes were allotted to climb those 100 feet, hopefully enveloped by the element of surprise.
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Lots of things went wrong.
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A strong current delayed the landings on the narrow beach.\u00a0 The Germans became alerted to the attack and had 30 minutes to prepare defensive positions.\u00a0 A number of the Rangers were killed or drowned when their landing craft came under fire.\u00a0
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The ladders, incredibly, didn\u2019t reach all the way to the top.\u00a0 German defenders fired machine guns and threw grenades at the climbers.\u00a0 And a group of 500 reinforcements was accidentally diverted to another landing site.\u00a0
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For all that, the Rangers succeeded.\u00a0 They fought their way to the top\u2026only to discover that the guns weren\u2019t there.\u00a0 They had been relocated and hidden about a half mile away, which necessitated another firefight.\u00a0
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After two days of almost continual combat, Pointe du Hoc was in Allied hands.\u00a0 But the cost had been high.\u00a0 Only 90 of the Rangers were still standing.\u00a0
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Most Americans have never heard of Pointe Du Hoc.\u00a0 But the almost superhuman efforts of those few men helped secure the Allied victory in Europe.
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The overall Allied mission on D-Day had been to occupy Normandy\u2019s high ground by the end of June 6.\u00a0 If they could accomplish that task \u2013 and they did \u2013 the war would be over.\u00a0 It would only be a matter of time before German resistance collapsed \u2013 something that happened 11 months later.
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A number of years ago, at the church that I was serving, I used the D-Day invasion as an illustration of what God did by sending Jesus into the world.\u00a0 Jesus\u2019 arrival established a beachhead for the reign of God.\u00a0 And once God\u2019s reign \u2013 God\u2019s reclaiming of the world \u2013 really began, there would be no stopping it.\u00a0 It\u2019s just a matter of time.
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After the service one of our oldest members, Maxine, paused to speak with me.\u00a0 \u201cThank you for your comments this morning.\u00a0 I know what you were trying to say.\u00a0 Once the Allies had landed in Normandy, the war, in principle, was over.\u201d
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Then she went on, \u201cBut my husband landed at Normandy.\u00a0 And he died a few weeks later in the hedgerow fighting in France.\u00a0 The outcome of the war may have been settled, but every day still brought terrible losses.\u201d
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Maxine was so right.\u00a0
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Jesus\u2019 mission is ultimately going to succeed.\u00a0 God is reclaiming this world \u2013 life by life and heart by heart \u2013 every day.\u00a0 But in a mystery that we cannot fully comprehend, God also assures us that we still have to do the work<\/em>.\u00a0 Life is difficult.\u00a0 We will all face struggles.\u00a0 God has assigned us the task of moving forward, often at what feels like costs that are too great to bear.
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Memorial Day is our annual opportunity to offer thanks for those who were willing to bear such costs, even to lay down their lives as the ultimate sacrifice.\u00a0
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Every day we cling to two certainties:
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God\u2019s work of redeeming this broken world is going to succeed.
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And by God\u2019s grace the work we do today on God\u2019s behalf \u2013 even if we only move a few feet forward \u2013 truly matters.\u00a0

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On June 6, 1944 \u2013 D-Day \u2013 Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, to begin the liberation of Europe from Hitler\u2019s Third Reich.\u00a0The beaches were not created equal.\u00a0\u00a0Pointe du Hoc is an imposing limestone bluff between the Omaha and Utah landing sites.\u00a0 Atop its 100-foot cliffs, the Germans installed guns that were capable of lobbing shells into Allied… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1682,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[86],"class_list":["post-1681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-kingdom-of-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1683,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1681\/revisions\/1683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}