December 7th, 1941 – Pearl Harbor Day – the “date which will live in infamy,” according to President Roosevelt. (A Date with Destiny). December 7, 1941 was, for what is called “the Greatest Generation,” the day that changed their world, just as September 11th is the day that changed the world for the generation of today. Larry Krespan was lying on the living room floor reading the Sunday paper. “We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin: “The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, by air, President Roosevelt has just announced. The attack was also was made on all naval and military activities on the principal island of Oahu.”

Eighty years ago, at Pearl Harbor, one pilot dropped a bomb right down the smoke stack of the USS Arizona. It went five decks down into the boiler room and exploded like a volcano. But the most devastating bomb hit the forward magazine area and exploded with the intensity of one million pounds of TNT. Those who witnessed the action said the ship veritably lifted out of the sea and then settled down to the bottom of the harbor. From the first bomb to her demise, a total of nine minutes elapsed. 1,177 sailors are entombed to this day in the Arizona. The attack on Pearl Harbor lasted for a shade under two hours. 2,403 were killed in action, 1,178 wounded, 640 were never accounted for; plus, 188 planes were lost, 158 damaged, six major airfields, and every battleship of the Pacific Fleet – eight – crippled or sunk, in addition to other ships.

I am sure you are familiar with the amazing story of the migration of the monarch butterfly, a lovely little creature who blesses our gardens and forests in the summer. Every autumn, millions of monarchs from all over the eastern United States and Canada migrate thousands of miles to a small handful of sites in Mexico where they rest for the winter. Then in the spring, they begin their return trip to the north. The amazing thing is that no individual monarch ever makes the trip to Mexico and back. A butterfly that leaves the Adirondack Mountains in New York will fly all the way to Mexico and spend the winter. In March, it begins the trip northward, but after laying eggs in the milkweed of Texas and Florida, it will die. Those butterflies will continue northward, laying eggs along the way until some of them, maybe three or four generations removed from the original, make it back to mountains of New York. But when August comes, they will head south, aiming for the exact place their great-grandparents visited, a place they have never been. Sue Haplern says: “The monarchs always migrate in community and depend on each other. Although a single monarch may make it from New York to Mexico, it is the next generation who completes the journey.

One of my favorite Christmas stories is O Henry’s short story, “The Gift of The Magi.” You are all familiar with it. It is a story about a desperately poor young couple living in New York around the turn of the last century. Neither had money sufficient to buy a gift for the other so they each secretly went out and sold something of worth. He sold his prized pocket watch to get her decorative combs for her long hair. When he presented them to her she removed her scarf to reveal that she had had her hair clipped and sold to purchase a gold chain for his pocket watch!

In John Steinbeck’s story, “The Wayward Bus,” a dilapidated old bus takes a cross-country shortcut on its journey to Los Angeles, and gets stuck in the mud. While the drivers go for assistance, the passengers take refuge in a cave. It is a curious company of people, and it is obvious that the author is attempting to get across the point that these people are lost spiritually as well as literally. As they enter into this cave, the author calls the reader’s attention to the fact that, as they enter, they must pass a word that has been scrawled with paint over the entrance. The word is REPENT.

Plato tells the story of a shepherd named Gyges, who was in the service of the king. One day there was a great storm and an earthquake where he was pasturing his flock. A great chasm opened in the earth and Gyges descended into the chasm. There he saw many astonishing things, including what looked like a human corpse. Although there were many amazing treasures in the chasm, he took nothing except a gold ring the corpse had on his finger. He then made his way out. He attended the usual meeting of shepherds which reported monthly to the king, and as he was sitting in the meeting, he happened to twist the bezel of the ring towards the inside of his hand. He immediately became invisible to his companions. He was astonished, and began twisting the ring again, and turned the bezel outwards, whereupon he became visible again. He experimented with the ring to see if it really had this power and found that every time he turned it outwards he became visible, and every time he turned it inwards, he became invisible. Having made this discovery, he managed to get himself invited to the palace where he stole great treasures from the king himself. Being invisible, he would never be caught. There would be no consequences for his actions whatsoever.

When the three astronauts, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, landed on the moon, they were the very first human beings in history who could view our planet, Earth, from the outside. As they gazed from outer space and even tried to locate the various continents on Earth, they were wonderstruck and fascinated by their unanimous observation- that six billion humans, in spite of differing nationalities, languages, customs, religions and traditions, were just one gigantic family. To quote one astronaut: “The first day in space, we all pointed to our countries. The second day, we pointed to our continents. By the third day, we were aware of only one Earth.”

This was the magnificent vision God gave to Isaiah and the ancient prophets for the Children of Israel first, and then for all of us. They prophesied and earnestly hoped for a brotherhood of man that would be as real as the Fatherhood of God. The prophets themselves were familiar with the injustices of an exploitative society and the horrors of senseless wars. But they faithfully propesied the coming of the  Messianic age, when the lamb would lie down with the wolf and have nothing to fear. Their Faith and Hope in God Who was inspiring them, enabled them to speak His  prophesy of a time of universal peace, when the strong would no longer prey on the weak or the cunning exploit the innocent.