"Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death is your sting?"
(1 Corinthians 15:55)
"A Date Which Will Live In Infamy" Japanese Attack On Pearl Harbor
Honolulu, Hawaii
Sunday December 7, 1941
Image courtesy/The Philadelphia Inquirer
Eighty four years ago today- Sunday, December 7, 1941- the
Reverend Peter Marshall Sr. preached to the regiment of midshipmen in
the graduating class at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
Prior to his speaking engagement that morning, Dr. Marshall felt a
sudden urge to change the topic of the homily he had chosen that day.
The Holy Spirit led him to an entirely different theme, based on
a passage from the Book of James 4:14:
"For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that
appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away."
Dr. Marshall preached a sermon entitled, "Go Down Death"
in which he used the following illustration:
"In a home of which I know, a little boy-the only son- was ill with an
incurable disease. Month after month his mother had tenderly nursed him,
read to him, and played with him, hoping to keep him from realizing
the dreadful finality of the doctor's diagnosis.
But as the weeks went on and he grew no better, the little fellow gradually
began to understand that he would never be like the other boys he saw
playing outside his window and, small as he was, he began to understand
the meaning of the term, death, and he, too, knew that he was to die.
One day his mother had been reading to him the stirring tales of King Arthur
and his Knights of the Round Table: of Lancelot and Guinevere and Elaine,
the lily maid of Astolat, and of that last glorious battle in which
so many fair knights met their deaths.
As she closed the book, the boy sat silent for an instant as though deeply
stirred with the trumpet call of the old English tale, and then asked the
question that had been weighing on his childish heart:
"Mother, what is it like to die? Mother, does it hurt?"
Quick tears sprang to her eyes and she fled to the kitchen supposedly
to tend to something on the stove. She knew it was a question with
deep significance. She knew it must be answered satisfactorily.
So she leaned for an instant against the kitchen cabinet, her knuckles
pressed white against the smooth surface, and breathed a hurried
prayer that the Lord would keep her from breaking down
before the boy and would tell her how to answer him.
And the Lord did tell her. Immediately she knew how to explain it to him.
"Kenneth," she said as she returned to the next room, "you remember when
you were a tiny boy how you used to play so hard all day that when night
came you would be too tired even to undress, and you would tumble into
mother's bed and fall asleep? That was not your bed...it was not where
you belonged. And you stayed there only a little while.
In the morning, much to your surprise, you would wake up and find yourself
in your own bed in your own room. You were there because someone had
loved you and taken care of you. Your father had come-with big strong
arms- and carried you away. Kenneth, death is just like that. We just
wake up some morning to find ourselves in the other room- our own
room where we belong-because the Lord Jesus loved us."
The lad's shining, trusting face looking up into hers told her that the
point had gone home and that there would be no more fear...only
love and trust in his little heart as he went to meet the Father in Heaven."
After Reverend Marshall had finished the service at Annapolis and he
and his wife, Catherine were driving back home to Washington DC
that afternoon, the program they were listening to on the car radio
was suddenly cut off. Then came the startling news:
"Ladies and Gentlemen. Stand by for an important announcement. This
morning the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor was bombed..."
"Within a month many of the boys to whom Peter Marshall had just
preached would go down to hero's graves in strange waters. Soon
all of them would be exposed to the risks and dangers of war
and Peter Marshall, under God's direction, that very morning
offered them the defining metaphor about the reality of eternal life."
Excerpts taken from the book,
"A Man Called Peter"
(1951)
Catherine Marshall
(1914-1983)
American Christian writer
Wife of Reverend Peter Marshall Sr.
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