'Nam Nightmare
Theme of the Week: The Risk of Reconciliation
John C. Maxwell
Thursday, June 20, 2002
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'Nam Nightmare
Theme of the Week: The Risk of Reconciliation
Thursday, June 20
Key Bible Verse: For God does not show favoritism (Romans 2:11). Bonus Reading:James 2:1–9
In Vietnam in 1970, Norman Schwarzkopf's battalion was assigned to a heavily mined area. Whenever a soldier was injured by a mine, he flew in his personal chopper to evacuate the man. While evacuating one soldier, another man stepped on a mine, severely injuring his leg. Clearly, they were in a minefield.
The man thrashed around on the ground, screaming. Schwarzkopf believed he could survive, even keep his leg—if he stopped flailing around. In his autobiography, It Doesn't Take a Hero, he wrote, "I started through the minefield … staring at the ground, looking for telltale bumps . …My knees were shaking so hard that each time I took a step, I had to grab my leg and steady it with both hands before I could take another." Schwarzkopf, who'd been a wrestler at West Point, then pinned the wounded man and calmed him down, saving his life.
That night at the hospital, three black soldiers stopped Schwarzkopf and said, "Colonel, we saw what you did for the brother out there. We'll never forget that; we'll make sure the other brothers in the battalion know what you did." Until that moment, it hadn't occurred to Schwarzkopf that the soldier was black.
—John C. Maxwell in The Right to Lead
My Response: What traits matter more to me than race?
Thought to Apply: All cats are gray in the dark.
—Proverb
Adapted from: The Right to Lead (J. Countryman, 2001).
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.
May/June 2002,Vol. 5,No. 3
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Lord, make me willing to endure discomfort in order to reach out as a reconciler.
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