"Gracious God, we commend to your care and keeping the brave men and women of the Pacific Fleet who paid the ultimate price for our nation on Pearl Harbor Day. Turn the pain of infamy into the hope of peace. Beat our swords into ploughshares and transform our warring madness into your Kingdom. AMEN+"
We cannot live into this day without this shocking image of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. On that day, would those who staggered in shock foresee the memorial that would one day enshrine the loss? Perhaps it is a mark of national pride, but well earned, that the monument has a sway back in the middle. It is supposed to represent the height of national pride before the attack, the depth of depression after it, and then the new height after the war. Some critics only saw it as a crushed soda can.
Then still, many others find their hope in this enduring prophecy from Isaiah 11:
6 The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
9 They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
7 The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
8 The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
9 They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.
Others follow the deeper prophecy of enduring hope from Isaiah:
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