Footnotes

I suppose someone did, but I'll not be far afield to say that no one saw it coming. It was all Hitler's dream--one great offensive, a half a million men, through Belgium's Ardennes forest, just like WWI--a huge German Army smashes through sleepy American force of rookies, and plows through Belgium to Antwerp, where the Reich regains a major world seaport.

The thing is, the entire operation went forward in silence. It was Christmas, winter had arrived, the bloody fighting after June 6 had somehow abated. On the Allied front, lots of American fighting men simply assumed that what remained of this long and costly war was a vast mop-up campaign that took them into Germany, all the way to Berlin. All of that might be costly, but the outcome no one doubted.

No one saw the Bulge coming, which is why America shuddered once the outlines of the Hitler's last and vast offensive became visible. It was huge, and it was scary and no one had seen it coming.

The Battle of the Bulge is far enough behind us now that the national consciousness would have to go back and familiarize itself with the fearful dimensions of World War II's most devastating battle. But President Volodymyr Zelensky pulled up the story of the Bulge from the history book in his own mind and used it as an analogy in the speech he gave to the combined Houses of Congress two nights ago. When he did, he gave his argument a historical heft that I found convincing, not simply because he knows something about WWII history (Ukraine knows a great deal about WWII history, believe me!), but because his reference to that immense battle lifted his appeal to us up and above the immediate. His noting that moment in history helps make me believe that the man is capable of seeing the significant affairs of this world in a wider context. In short, his referencing the Bulge was, to me at least, convincing.

It was Christmas then, and it's Christmas now, and last night, at devotions, we once again read through the Magnificat, Mary's song, the hymn some say is the most beautiful music in Scripture. Who was Mary?--a kid really, some say maybe 14 years old. She's visited by an angel who tells her, first, not to be afraid, but then imparts the most impossible news of all time: she will be visited by none other than the Lord God Almighty, who will leave her with child, "in the family way." She will be the vessel by which Jehovah God brings salvation to his people.

She's little more than a child, but when she responds in the Magnificat, she lays claim to this new and shocking role she's been given in song. It rushes out into the future (" From this day all generations will call me blessed") then catalogs the stories of her people, God's people:

He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children forever.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.

Had I been Mary's teacher, I could not have been more proud. She's knows her history. She understands her place therein.

The older I get, the more I come to see the immense blessing it is to know your history, like Zalensky, like Mary, mother of Jesus. History's blessing is humility. It regards sincerely what has gone on before and lets us know that we're just a part of a story that's ever so much bigger than we are.

And that's a blessing.