A Slice of Hawaii, the Navy, and My Uncle Jack

 A couple Saturdays ago, we'd been invited to the 80th birthday party of the mother of the pastor of the Nazarene church up the hill. It was a chance to connect with quite a number of neighbors and acquaintances, even some folk all the way from Pierre.

 I had just been reading a book about Rev. Rowan Fay, a pastor and hero in our ranks, who was and still is always encouraging people to reach out and connect with others in order to help them come to Christ or to encourage them in their walk with God. He would find every way possible to reach people, even though in his younger years he was not a people person. Rowan prays every day that God will help him to love God and love people, and when you love people, you do not avoid them; you try to connect with them. 

So we went. The party revolved around a colorful Hawaiian theme, decorated with real coconuts and other bright decor. A person could have his choice of coconut drink or pineapple. (I chose coconut because I love coconut and can't eat pineapple.) Besides pulled pork sandwiches, servers supplied lightly grilled shrimp and pineapple kabobs, coleslaw and chips. 

I sat with a native lady on one side of me and a neighbor on the other who broached the subject of Hawaii. She started telling us how her dad was a navy man during the war, and he was personally involved in the trainings and practice related to the A-bomb, as our neighbor called it. He was one of two men in 1946 who were involved in operating the Geiger machine that measured radiation out in the middle of the ocean during practice called Operation Crossroads. Tests were set off in the Marshall Islands to study the effects of nuclear bombs on naval ships. 

Back in those days, they did not know how dangerous the radiation from the bomb was. Her father was just told that when they saw the mushroom cloud, to just duck down behind the rail of the ship or whatever they were in. Later in life, her dad ended up with skin cancers that had to be removed from several places on his face and even in his throat from the radiation. 

I wrote up our neighbor's interesting stories of her dad for my uncle Jack who was also in the Navy long years ago. He has just passed his 91st birthday but is fighting renal cancer and my thoughts are often with him and his family. 

I have mostly only positive  memories of this special uncle who took time with me and my siblings through the years--taking us when we were little for rides in a wagon behind his riding mower (without mowing, of course), taking us as teens for boat rides in his boat in Florida, and showing my own Lucas family around his place in Florida about 13 years ago where we got to pick grapefruit from his own tree.

Please pray for my uncle Jack and his family as they navigate these days of stormy water, as it were.

I sent him the hymn, "Jesus, Savior Pilot Me," in the hopes it would be a blessing to him as a former Navy man. 

Jesus, Savior, pilot me,
Over life’s tempestuous sea;
Unknown waves before me roll,
Hiding rock and treach’rous shoal;
Chart and compass come from Thee:
Jesus, Savior, pilot me!

As a mother stills her child,
Thou canst hush the ocean wild;
Boist’rous waves obey Thy will
When Thou say’st to them, “Be still!”
Wondrous Sov’reign of the sea,
Jesus, Savior, pilot me!

When at last I near the shore,
And the fearful breakers roar
’Twixt me and the peaceful rest,
Then, while leaning on Thy breast,
May I hear Thee say to me,
“Fear not, I will pilot thee!”

"The hymn text “Jesus, Savior, Pilot Me” was written in 1871 by Edward Hopper (1818–1888), pastor of the Church of Sea and Land in New York Harbor. Hopper ministered to sailors coming and going, many of whom became lost at sea; his was thus a transient congregation, and one well acquainted with grief and uncertainty.

This is the only hymn of Hopper’s to have survived. It uses nautical imagery to speak of how Christ guides us through life’s stormy waters, all the way safe to the other shore, heaven. It is a petitionary hymn that beseeches Jesus to be present and active, but it is also a hymn of consolation."

(the above song and comments are from https://artandtheology.org/2022/07/26/jesus-savior-pilot-me-three-tunes-multiple-stylings/