Flags of Our Fathers

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I am reading a good book called Flags of our Fathers. Clint Eastwood and company made a movie out of it. I had the chance to see that movie last week while on the road. I first heard of this book when John Piper quoted from it extensively in Don't Waste Your Life. It's the personal biographies of the five men whose photo was taken while raising an American Flag on Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima during World War II. Interwoven are the stories of many of the U. S. Marines who invaded this island, the first piece of native Japanese soil to fall to the advancing Americans in the pacific. Very inspiring, but might not be popular world-wide.

It is a real story of real human beings who did something heroic. Like President Reagan said, "Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem." Piper draws the book into a Christian worldview. In the above mentioned book, he says:


The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure he is. No war on earth was ever fought for a greater cause or a greater king … But oh, what bold risks and daring sacrifices these lesser causes have inspired! … Oh, that young and old would turn off the television, take a long walk, and dream about feats of courage for a cause ten thousand times more important than American democracy—as precious as that is. If we would dream and if we would pray, would not God answer?

Let us, as Martin Luther would say, “speak the amen firmly,” having faith that God will surely hear and say yes to our prayers.

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