Tag: D-Day

“Get off the beach!”

We just returned from a visit to France, where we spent a few days in the Normandy region – the site of the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944. A couple of weeks ago, I reflected on that pivotal moment in a post called Fortitude.

We stayed at L’Ormel Manor – now a charming Airbnb – in Vierville-sur-Mer, just a mile from the English Channel and right in the heart of Omaha Beach. Sections of these now-serene beaches were once codenamed Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword as part of Operation Overlord. American troops landed at Omaha Beach, where the fighting was the fiercest and the casualty rate the highest.

After being dropped off by landing craft, soldiers had to cross a wide expanse of open beach under heavy German fire. A low seawall offered a degree of protection, along with a natural ridge of sand and pebbles known as a shingle bank. If a soldier made it to the seawall, he might have had a chance to survive – for a while.

But the protection was temporary

Thousands of soldiers clustered behind the seawall. It was better than open exposure, but it wasn’t a place to stay. German artillery could be repositioned at any time. The only way forward, the only chance at survival, and the only way for the invasion to succeed, was to get off the beach and push inland.

I remember reading The Longest Day as a 17-year-old, trying to imagine boys about my age crouched behind that seawall, knowing they couldn’t stay there. I wonder how many would’ve preferred to take their chances right where they were. It took bold leadership like that of Brigadier General Norm Cota to get them moving. But that was what had to take place. There was no Plan B.

The success of D-Day rested entirely on this reality: they had to get off the beach.

Once off the beach, they needed to drive inland and establish outposts from which to continue penetrating the enemy strongholds.

An Omaha Beach view from the bluff

In Fortitude, I reflected on another beachhead moment – when the Israelites crossed the Jordan and entered the land of Canaan. I suggested that this land wasn’t just a reward – it was a launching point. It was a beachhead for God’s people to re-engage in their calling: to be catalysts in the redemption and restoration of the world.

They were, in God’s words, a “kingdom of priests.” A people set apart to be agents of God’s presence and blessing. Their role wasn’t simply to enjoy the land, but to extend God’s goodness to the image-bearers around them. To bring God’s will to earth as it is in heaven. They were blessed to be a blessing.

At the time of their entry into Canaan (around 1400 BC), historians estimate the world population at 100–150 million. The Israelites? Maybe around three million, just 2–3% of the world’s population. For reference, Christians today make up about the same percentage of the population in Palestine.

The Israelites had a mission. But they didn’t follow through.

God’s original calling to Abraham couldn’t have been clearer:

2“I will make you into a great nation,
    and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
    and you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you,
    and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
    will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12)

They were blessed to be a blessing

But somewhere along the way, the people of Israel got stuck behind the seawall. They began to focus more on receiving God’s blessing than extending it. More on what God could do for them than on what God had called them to do through them. And if you know the story, you know it didn’t end well.

A Word for Us…

I wonder if we – particularly those of us in the Western Church – aren’t guilty of a similar hesitation. We talk a lot about God’s blessings, God’s provision, and God’s presence for us. And those things are real, but they aren’t the whole picture.

Jesus’ parting command wasn’t to bunker down and wait for heaven. It was this: “Go and make disciples of all nations…” (Matthew 28:19). In other words, get off the beach.

God didn’t save us so we could crouch behind a seawall of safety and spiritual satisfaction. He blessed us so we could move forward, take ground, and share that blessing with the world.

Something to think about.

Fortitude

I am writing this on June 5, 2025, a day before the 81st anniversary of the D-Day Invasion of Normandy. Soon, I will actually be standing on the beaches and bluffs of France’s Normandy coast. I will follow the actions of 101st Airborne’s Easy Company on a Band of Brothers tour. I will get to stand in the tree line of a Brecourt Manor pasture that housed the massive 105mm (~4″) artillery guns that fired on the landing beaches over a mile (1.6 km) away – guns disabled by Easy Company.

Ever since reading  The Longest Day as a high school junior, I’ve been captivated by the Normandy Invasion, known as Operation Overlord. It gripped my imagination. I was struck by the sheer scale and grim intensity of the Normandy landings, as 156,000 Allied soldiers stormed the beaches. With over two years of preparation, Operation Overlord was a massive undertaking involving close to three million armed forces personnel, not to mention the support of millions of civilians. The sheer scale of preparation to liberate France – and eventually all of Europe – from the grip of a God-disregarding Nazi regime completely astounded me, and still does.

The reality that many of the landing troops were near my age was not lost on me as I read The Longest Day. I could not fathom the courage it must have taken for the troops to step off their Higgins Boats. I was pretty sure I didn’t have the courage required. Nor I suspect, did they. But they did it anyway.

Courage!

After God rescued his people from Egyptian slavery, they spent 40 years in preparation to enter the land that He had set aside for them to occupy and live. Preparation? Yes – the people were learning how to be people of the King, the one true God. They were discovering his sovereignty and character. They were discovering how to live together as a kingdom of people under His Kingship. They were living out the commandments. Preparation indeed.

The land was to be the beachhead from which they would restart their mission as God’s people chosen with the task of being a blessing to the nations around them, a kingdom of priests. But the land was inhabited by a morally corrupt people who disregarded Yahweh’s sovereignty. How corrupt? One example: Sacrificing children to the god Molech was a common feature of their cultic religion.

After the 40 years of preparation, Moses had died, and the leadership baton was passed on to Joshua. He was tasked with leading the millions of Israelites into Canaan to replace the evildoers. God had judged the Canaanites and found them wanting, so they were about to be displaced. And it was Joshua’s responsibility to lead the people into the land.

I often ponder the conversation between God and Joshua as He prepared Joshua to lead the people of Israel across the Jordon River to inherit the “promised land…”

God to Joshua: “Be strong and courageous because you will lead these people to inherit the land I swore to their ancestors to give them.  Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go.  Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.  Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” (Joshua 1:6-9, also Deuteronomy 31)

Three times, God connected strength and courage in his instructions to Joshua.  In Hebrew poetic tradition, anything stated three times demands attention. So, being a dabbler in Hebrew, I poked around a bit to see what I could discover.  Strong and courageous are linked because they are related words.1  The Hebrew word for courage is amats, which means: To be determined, to make oneself alert, to strengthen oneself.   Courage is about an internal resolve and fortitude.2

Interesting!  Courage in Hebrew thought seems to have nothing to do with acts of bravery, which is what usually comes to mind when we think of courage.  It seems to have more to do with internal resolve. I immediately think of the Apostle Paul’s statement of resolve in his letter to the Philippian Christians:

[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him [that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding the wonders of His Person more strongly and more clearly], and that I may in that same way come to know the power outflowing from His resurrection [which it exerts over believers], and that I may so share His sufferings as to be continually transformed [in spirit into His likeness].  (Philippians 3:10, Amplified)

The determined purpose, the internal resolve, of the young men who stormed the Normandy beaches was to reach the shore and establish a beachhead from which they could liberate the land. Joshua’s determined purpose was to lead Yahweh’s kingdom people into a land from which they could become a blessing to the world around them. As Christ-followers, as Kingdom people, I suspect a fair question to ask ourselves, both individually and corporately, might be…

What might you say is your determined purpose?

1Addendum July 2025. The correct term for the linking of two terms like strong and courageous is hendiadys: the expression of a single idea by two words connected with “and,” e.g., nice and warm, when one could be used to modify the other, as in nicely warm.

2Interestingly, Operation Overlord included a massive deception operation designed to mislead the Nazi High Command into believing an invasion would take place in either Norway or Pas de Calais, France. The deception plan was called Operation Fortitude.