What Courage!

Fort Morgan is located on the southern tip of Alabama, just across the bay from Mobile. On the wall of the museum located on the premises there is a bronze plaque containing the following words: “Soldiers of Fort Morgan, your country has given this trust of honor in your charge. Will you make them proud of you and fulfill their expectations? Then have the determined will and strong resolution that you will not be overcome; contemplate no possibility of failure, and with the blessings of God we will withstand the enemy to the last.”

Those words were written by General R.L. Page of the Confederate Army. His words were immortalized on that plague because he encouraged his men to believe in the achievable, in spite of the odds that they were facing. I think Paul had the same mind set when he wrote that beautiful passage in Philippians 3:13-14: “Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

The late Bobby Duncan once commented: “If we make our faithfulness dependent on certain conditions then we are contemplating the possibility of failure.”

I enjoy watching “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, if only for the notable quotes that come from those three movies. One of my favorite was made by Aragorn as he and his men were about to engage the enemy: “Hold your ground, hold your ground! Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of woes and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!”

May God help each one of us to have the same mind and the same determination of will as that encouraged by General Page. “And having done all, to stand” (Eph. 6:13).