Monday Morning Meditation #43: Numbering the Army

I Chronicles, as I continue through it, provides lists and lists of all kinds of various things (actually, people and duties, mostly). I stopped at the enumeration of people for the Army since that seemed appropriate for today, Memorial Day (well, the designated holiday; yesterday was really Memorial Day, and the actual date always stays with my because my daughter, Noelle, was born on that day, making Memorial Day, the real one, a double festivity).

There are two sections to the enumeration of Army personnel: the actual counting in verses 1-22 and then the comment in verses 23-24 that God was not pleased with the counting since He had promised that he would make Israel's numbers great, i.e. David should have trusted that and not felt a need to count. Here are those verses:

David did not take the number of the men twenty years old or less, because the LORD had promised to make Israel as numerous as the stars in the sky. 24 Joab son of Zeruiah began to count the men but did not finish. Wrath came on Israel on account of this numbering, and the number was not entered in the book [a] of the annals of King David.

Now, having reproduced those verses, which are probably the most important two in this passage, for reflection and meditation, I chose not to concentrate on them although to do so would be time valuably spent. Instead, this being Memorial Day, I chose to concentrate on the enumeration of individuals and officers in the Army.

Reading: I Chronicles 27: 1-23.

Meditation: I chose to meditate on the enumeration, beyond noting the fact that this enumeration was not pleasing to God, because it reminded me so much of my Army days, about which I have spoken little in this blog. Today, however, being Memorial Day is an appropriate time, it seems to me, for both reflection on those days and meditation on this listing. Anyone who has served in any Army is likely to have felt like any individual on David's list: one fighting unit among many, the individual himself or herself disappearing into the unit. For safety and effectiveness, that is the way it must be. The unit must be one team, and especially during training, that is the way I felt, the way we all felt: we each had our role but our importance as individuals was secondary to the mission.

Our importance as individuals to each other, however, was significant. Anyone who has served, or anyone who has watched such movies as Saving Private Ryan, understands why many comrades will give their lives to save just one. It is not economical. It is not logical. It is simply the way it is when you live and work together with people upon whom you depend for life, safety, comradeship, and sanity. It has been more than 20 years since I left the Army, but the friendships developed there are just as deep today as they were during the days I was serving. Last year I attended a conference in Austin, Texas where a married couple, both former comrades in arms, literally, now live. We had not seen each other for ten years, but we simply began the conversation where we had left off, as if not a day had parted us. That is the way it is with Army buddies. A dozen years ago, we got a phone call from an Army comrade who was passing through our part of California, had no place to stay with his family while conducting a few days of business in our town, and had heard that we lived there. He found us, called, and within a couple of hours, we had rearranged our house so that he, his wife, and son could have our master bedroom suite for the week, and Donnie and I moved in to bunk with our kids. Indeed, that is the way it is with Army buddies. The experience is never completely in the past.

I never planned to enter the Army. That was an "accident." I accompanied Donnie on a trip to check out the possibilities of his entering the Army as a photographer. Long story short, I ended up in, and he did not. Like most of my life, which I do not seem to get to plan but for which I can tell, later, there has been some Divine plan or intention, my Army days have been very important to me later in my career. Not necessary, but very important for my understanding of many things, including the importance of people (and buddies). God's plan, not my plan, gave me, a T (thinking type, MBTI scale), the emotional softening and the understanding of the importance of being unimportant that would help you in many of my civilian jobs.

When I was 18, I thought I had a plan for my life. None of it has been realized. However, the journey I have been pushed along, dragged along, and enticed along has been far better than anything I could have planned -- including my days in the Army.

That is far as I can go with you this Monday morning. I must retire to private prayer to thank God for doing my planning for me, to praise Him for His ability to bring to all of us the experiences we need to have in order to become more like He would have us be, to repent for those times that I have chafed against the directions in which He has pushed me, and to ask Him to watch over every one of our service members on this Memorial Day and bring blessings to the families of the fallen. Now I retire to spend as much time as I can in contemplation, my favorite part of the day, letting God take over the direction in which my relationship with Him moves.

I will leave you to your prayer and contemplation, but first, I would like to bring to your attention a Monday morning prayer post that you might enjoy:

Fr. Austin Fleming, priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and pastor in Concord, Massachusetts, posts a prayer each Monday morning that he calls "Monday Morning Offering." I enjoy his prayers very much. I hope you also will find them inspirational. He has graciously given me permission to include a link to his blog on my Monday Morning Meditation posts.

For additional inspiration throughout the week, I would point out two sets of blogs: (1) the list of devotional blogs that follow the enumeration of Monday Morning Meditations on the sidebar of this blog and (2) my blogroll, where I am following a number of inspirational priests and writers about spiritual matters. I learn so very much from all these people. I highly recommend them to you.