Not in Vain
By Jack Wyman
The sun was setting gently across the broad Pacific.
In its breathtaking beauty and confident serenity, it was a majestic and powerful sight.
It was, perhaps, this peaceful sunset, together with the relentless violence and destructive contagion of war, that led the great man to take pen in hand on this evening.
Just harrowing days earlier, he and his family were crossing turbulent and dangerous waters in a small PT boat, surrounded by the enemy. He had found solace and protection on this island nation.
His heart turned now, in this quiet hour, to prayer. Prayer of gratitude for deliverance and safe transport; prayer for wisdom in marshalling the stalwart forces under his command. Prayer for victory.
His son was four years old. He thought of the boy’s vulnerability, his total dependence, his weakness. He thought of those towering waves crashing upon their fragile, tiny craft.
This was his only child.
Tears filled his eyes.
“Build me a son, O Lord,” he slowly wrote, “who will be strong enough to know when he is weak and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid; one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.”
He thought of his eminent heritage; of the greatness of his father and grandfather. He recalled their courage, their integrity, their devotion to God and to others. This he wished for his son to have.
Character. Nobility. Courage. Honor. Old and timeless attributes. Admirable, yet so far removed from our modern time as to seem somehow quaint and archaic.
“Build me a son whose wishes will not take the place of deeds,” the father continued, “a son who will know Thee—and that to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge.
Knowing God is the key to knowing ourselves, others, and the world. It is grounded and rooted in the reality of truth. Forgetting God is to abandon all true knowledge of ourselves, our condition, our need, and our ultimate hope. Man’s defiant rebellion against God has always been man’s undoing. Still, he rushes headlong and heedless.
The evidence of this is so glaringly apparent we would be deliberately obtuse to deny it. Knowledge of ourselves is only discovered through our understanding of God. He not only reveals himself to us, he reveals us to ourselves. “That I may know him,” Paul the apostle wrote of his life’s ambition, “and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10).
The father wrote on:
“Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and spur of difficulties and challenge. Here let him learn to stand up in the storm; here let him learn compassion for those who fail.”
The perseverance of the saints is an inviolate principle of Christian faith rightly understood. Suffering, challenges, difficulties, struggles, and overcoming them through the power of God, is illustrated and exhorted throughout the scriptures and the history of the church. Nowhere do we find the promise of a flowery bed of ease that carries us aloft over this world and its trials and heartaches.
The bell always tolls for us.
We are promised instead the presence and power of God; his comfort and strength; his ultimate deliverance on our behalf. He helps us stand up in the storms of life. Our hardships make us compassionate and empathetic toward others who also suffer.
Persecution empowers perseverance.
“God whispers to us in our pleasures,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
We do not tell our children there will be no dark days; we tell them about the power and comfort of God when the dark days come. We pray for them accordingly.
“Build me a son,” the father wrote, “whose heart will be clear, whose goal will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past.”
Discernment, purity of heart, holy ambition, and self-control. This devoted father wanted his son to possess these virtues—and to be known for them. He wanted his son to understand and cherish the past as a guide to charting a better future. He wanted him to have heroes he could admire and seek to emulate. He wanted him to love his country and learn from its history.
“Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, and the weakness of true strength.”
It was asking God for a lot. But this was important and the father knew God was able. In these humble and simple heartfelt words of intercession, he brought his son—his only son—before God’s holy throne. He laid his son’s life on the altar of consecration.
He closed his written prayer
“Then I, his father, will dare to whisper, ‘I have not lived in vain.’”
When he wrote this prayer, General Douglas MacArthur, hero of World War II, was stationed in Australia and serving as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific. It was 1942. The whole world was at war. The outcome was uncertain. He prayed this for his son, Arthur
Amidst the chaos and divisions of our unrestrained and difficult times—when manhood itself and the ancient virtues are under assault and ridicule by those who would re-define morality—the words of this noble prayer may inspire us to love and guide our sons and daughters.
Let us stand, and speak, and teach, and act on behalf of those we love. Let us defend and protect them, whatever the cost, our legacy and our nation’s future. Let us pray for them.
That God may build them—keep them, bless them, and lead them to the truly satisfying and abundant life.
That you and I may also one day whisper, “I have not lived in vain.”
To order Jack Wyman’s book, “Everything Else: Stories of Life, Faith and Our World”, go to amazon.com, Christian Book Distributors or barnesandnoble.com. It is also available on Kindle and eBooks.
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