{"id":3719,"date":"2024-06-06T06:47:42","date_gmt":"2024-06-06T10:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=3719"},"modified":"2024-06-06T21:23:07","modified_gmt":"2024-06-07T01:23:07","slug":"d-day-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/06\/d-day-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"D-Day Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

\u201cIf there was ever a moment for prayer, no matter what you might believe, this was it.\u201d

That\u2019s historian John Meacham\u2019s assessment of what was at stake on June 6, 1944, as the Allies began Operation Overlord.

It was D-Day.\u00a0The combined military forces of the nations that opposed Hitler\u2019s Third Reich crossed the English Channel into France.

Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower and his staff were prepared to lose as many as 20,000 lives during the first 24 hours.

Failure would be potentially catastrophic.\u00a0

Politically, it might spell the end of Winston Churchill\u2019s government in London.\u00a0The crash of public morale might also mean Franklin D. Roosevelt would lose his presidential re-election bid the following November.

More ominously, failure on the Normandy beaches would give the Nazis enough time to finish their genocidal work in the death camps, and might even give German scientists sufficient opportunity to create their own atomic weapons and unleash them upon Europe.

Even though he wasn\u2019t a religious man, Roosevelt decided to write a presidential prayer.\u00a0

In his book American Gospel, <\/em>Meacham calls it \u201can eloquent six-minute prayer to a superintending Providence.\u201d

The White House released the text of the prayer to the afternoon papers, along with a special request.

Americans should listen to their radios on the evening of June 6 (hours after the invasion had already begun) and read the words aloud with the president.\u00a0

With a radio audience estimated at 100 million, historians believe it is still the largest single mass prayer in human history.\u00a0Here\u2019s what Roosevelt prayed:

Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor:\u00a0the struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, to set free a suffering humanity.\u00a0Lead them straight and true.\u00a0Give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.\u00a0They will need Thy blessings.\u00a0The road will be long and hard.\u00a0<\/em>

For the enemy is strong.\u00a0He may hurl back our forces.\u00a0Success will not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again, and we know that by Thy grace and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.\u00a0They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest, until the victory is won.\u00a0<\/em>

Darkness will be rent by noise and flame, men\u2019s souls will be shaken by the violences of war, for these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace.\u00a0They fight not for the lust of conquest.\u00a0They fight to end conquest.\u00a0They fight to liberate.\u00a0They fight to let justice arise and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people.\u00a0They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.<\/em>

Some will never return.\u00a0Embrace these, Father.\u00a0Receive them, Thy heroic servants into Thy kingdom.\u00a0With Thy blessing we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy.\u00a0Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances.\u00a0<\/em>

Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will ensure peace, invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men, and a peace that will let all men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.\u00a0Thy will be done, Almighty God.\u00a0 Amen.<\/em>

It was a powerful prayer, exhibiting what Meacham calls \u201ca peculiar combination of hope and humility.\u201d\u00a0

The president urged Americans not to thump their chests but to entrust their best efforts to a Power beyond themselves.

Abraham Lincoln, who steered America through the Civil War, was once asked if he thought God was on the side of the North.\u00a0He answered, wisely, that he hoped every day he could be on God\u2019s side.

September 1, 1939, Germany\u2019s invasion of Poland, which ignited World War II, triggered a widespread response of fear. The sudden violence of two other dates \u2013 December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001 \u2013 generated national shock and rage.\u00a0

It\u2019s worth noting that 80 years ago today our nation was moved by a different common impulse.

That response was prayer.

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here \u201cIf there was ever a moment for prayer, no matter what you might believe, this was it.\u201d That\u2019s historian John Meacham\u2019s assessment of what was at stake on June 6, 1944, as the Allies began Operation Overlord. It was D-Day.\u00a0The combined military forces of the nations that opposed Hitler\u2019s Third Reich… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3720,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[179],"class_list":["post-3719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-prayer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719","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=3719"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3722,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3719\/revisions\/3722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}