May 31, 2005 “Our Semper Fi Brother!” Matthew 9:18-26 Key verse(s) 22“Jesus turned and saw her. ‘Take heart, daughter,’ he said, ‘your faith has healed you.’ And the woman was healed from that moment.”
Nothing defines endurance better than a Marine. I have known a few Marines in my life; in fact my father-in-law was a Marine and I have several friends who have served in the corps. These are a special breed of people, not that they really look much different in civilian life than you or I. It’s more a matter of heart than it is body that defines a Marine.
One of the most tragic events during the Reagan Presidency was the Sunday morning terrorist bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, in which hundreds of Americans were killed or wounded as they slept. Many of us can still recall the terrible scenes as the dazed survivors worked to dig out their trapped brothers from beneath the rubble.
A few days after the tragedy, I recall coming across an extraordinary story. Marine Corps Commandant Paul X Kelly, visited some of the wounded survivors then in a Frankfurt, Germany, hospital. Among them was Corporal Jeffrey Lee Nashton, severely wounded in the incident. Nashton had so many tubes running in and out of his body that a witness said he looked more like a machine than a man; yet he survived.
As Kelly neared him, Nashton, struggling to move and racked with pain, motioned for a piece of paper and a pen. He wrote a brief note and passed it back to the Commandant. On the slip of paper were but two words -- “Semper Fi” the Latin motto of the Marines meaning “forever faithful.” With those two simple words Nashton spoke for the millions of Americans who have sacrificed body and limb and their lives for their country -- those who have remained faithful. (J. Dobson & Gary Bauer, Children at Risk, Word, 1990, pp. 187-188.)
Never giving up. I guess that’s the import of this story. Even when things are seemingly hopeless and the pain is unbearable, a Marine is forever faithful. I asked a Marine friend of mine recently what “forever faithful” really meant to him. I thought that it would take a while for him to respond in the careful and detailed way so endemic to the Marine psyche. Yet, his eyes simply brightened for a moment as if he was wondering why I had never asked the question before. He took off his baseball cap and with hands at his side he simply said, “It means that no matter how hard it gets or how bad I feel, I know that there is always one thing I can rely on; something that blunts the pain and brightens my
...