The greatest Master

“Fire it”

“Fire it. There’s more of them than there are of us.” Those were the words of this man, artillery officer John Robert Fox.

Fox was part of a retreating corps of American forces battling the Nazis control of a small, but critical village in Tuscany, Italy back in December of 1944. As his ranks retreated, trying desperately to escape a Nazi onslaught, Fox stayed behind with a pair of binoculars, a skeleton crew of fellow soldiers, and a rock-ribbed commitment to protecting his brothers-in-arms.

Throughout the battle, Fox would radio coordinates to artillery gunners of where the Nazis were most densely concentrated. As hundreds of Nazi troops began to amass almost directly beneath, all with the stated purpose of pursuing and destroying the fleeing American troops, Fox did the unimaginable. Realizing it might be his brothers’ only chance at survival, Fox radioed in his exact coordinates to the gunners.

But understanding what would happen if they fired on that position, the gunner told Fox he would not fire on Fox’s own position. That’s when John Robert Fox uttered that famous line that ended up, just like him, recorded in the history books: “Fire it. There’s mor of them than there are of us.”

Fox was right, which is why when the regrouped and ultimately successful American troops re-entered the village, they found his body surrounded by hundreds of dead Nazis. Few exhibit the kind of love for their fellow man that John Robert Fox did that day. The least we can do is to remember, mourn, and honor him this day, no?

Those are just some brief Memorial Day thoughts before I get on with this week’s Memo. But permit me one more quick delay by reminding you that if you’re interested at all in joining our online Memo community this year as a paying subscriber, you don’t want to wait.

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From now until June 1, you can still get 20% off the original price of a year’s subscription. That $80 for the year gets you a weekly Memo (like this), a 5-minute Bible teaching video clip that I hope centers and motivates you, and the FULL MemoPOD podcast, with an option to watch video of the podcast done in real time.

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So, for those of you who are perhaps new to the Memo, it’s not normally a special event newsletter that celebrates manmade holidays. It’s normally more like this…

My wife Jenny recently had surgery on her spine, and it’s left her in an obnoxious neck brace that makes her miserable and self-conscious. As much as I hate it for her, I’m so thankful the surgery seems to have been successful. She had compressed discs that had initially created tingles in the fingers of her left hand, but had progressively gotten so bad that it had turned into almost complete numbness through her left arm.

I can only pretend to understand all they did in the procedure – going in through the front her neck, pushing over the esophagus, inserting donor bone that will eventually grow together with her vertebrae, all protected by a small steel plate that certain bones are screwed to. I don’t mind admitting when I heard all that I was amazed for a moment at the expertise of the doctors and the incredible advances we have made scientifically.

While Jenny was in recovery I was able to look at some of the kind of tools and equipment the surgeons used, and it left me blown away. So high-tech, so complex, so precise, so amazing. It’s no wonder to me that so many people are in awe at the wonders of science. It’s fascinating and incredibly impressive.

But as I laid here at home and listened to her sleep the other night, it hit me out of the blue. If I think the tools and equipment the doctors used to operate on my wife were intricate and impressive, what about the object those doctors were operating on? If you truly want to see something impressive, if you truly want to be blown away by the intricacies of a working masterpiece, consider the human nervous system.

Your nervous system uses specialized cells called neurons to send signals, or messages, all over your body. These electrical signals travel between your brain, skin, organs, glands and muscles.

Different kinds of neurons send different signals. Motor neurons tell your muscles to move. Sensory neurons take information from your senses and send signals to your brain. Other types of neurons control the things your body does automatically, like breathing, shivering, having a regular heartbeat and digesting food.

Remarkable. Jaw-dropping complexity and design. Or forget the nervous system and try a different one. A few years ago I developed a series of five apologetic, faith-building presentations that I offered as adult seminars or weekend retreats for high school and college aged kids.

I spliced together a video and recorded a voiceover to explain the “simple” process of hearing. I want you to watch this very short video clip, not because you’re going to be tested over the anatomy of it all, but because every day your faith is tested. And this? This is about as God-affirming of evidence that you could ever want:

Consider that the current explanation of human existence that is accepted in sophisticated circles of the day pretends that all of that – everything you just watched – happened to piece itself together randomly, without any intent, direction, or design. There’s a word for that: impossible.

I don’t care how many billion years you give blind forces of nature to work (and they keep adding billions because they hope it will make the fantasy they proselytize more plausible), they can never put together something so intricately designed.

Every masterpiece is the product of a master. And we humans? We are the greatest, most wondrous masterpiece of all which stands to reason. We are the product of the creative mind of the most wondrous Master you could never imagine.

Be encouraged.

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