“The children of Ephraim, being armed and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle. They did not keep the covenant of God; They refused to walk in His law ...” (Ps. 78:9-10)

They ‘turned back in the day of battle’. Sounds like some other folks we read about in John 6:66 and 2 Tim. 4:10...when it comes to ‘turning back’, or maybe even ‘falling away from the faith’.

Imagine going into a war, or battle zone...having all the training, weapons, and protective armor you could possibly need...and then laying it aside while carrying on with your personal business as if it was just a Saturday walk in the park. The chances of you ending up in ‘body bag’ would be high...I would imagine.

Allow me to share some personal history here for a moment with you. I was born in 1960, here in the United States into a ‘military’ family as my dad served for 30 years in the Army. I grew up traveling from one military base to another the first 18 years of my life, five of them were spent in Europe. Growing up on military installations where a strong presences of soldiers and tanks and planes was simply a ‘way of life’ for me and countless others. By dad happened to be a dentist so it was not like he was some ‘armed fighting soldier’ being deployed off into conflicts all over the world, like many other men/husbands/fathers were; some who never returned home ...alive.

The only kind of ‘real war’ I ever witnessed growing up was seen on TV in news clips and such. Viet Nam was my first exposure to learning what ‘war’ was. Then, as an adult, I sat glued to the TV when the US entered Persian Gulf War in 1991. It was a surreal moment for me to watch with the realization that this was not a movie or TV show unfolding before my eyes.

I personally ...have never experienced what it is like to have my homeland invaded...by a ‘foreign enemy’. In fact, no American citizen living here today can say they have witnessed or experienced such an invasion on US Soil since the Revolutionary War. Pearl Harbor, was an ‘attack’... but not a successful invasion, and even that happened on the small island of Hawaii way out in the Pacific Ocean...before Hawaii was even a state. What transpired on 9/11 was also a horrifying ‘attack’ that we all witnessed on our TV’s, but it too...was not an ‘invasion’.

Most of us alive today and living here on US soil cannot fathom what it would be like to see tanks rolling in to your cities and communities like multiple countries did in Europe when Hitler’s troops and Nazi Germany went on their ‘Blitzkrieg’ and began swallowing up neighboring countries.

Fifteen years ago, I spent countless hours photographing and hearing the personal stories of Holocaust survivors as they shared with me what it was like to go in to hiding from troops invading their homes, seeing and experiencing atrocities that I have nothing to compare with.

Few of us can grasp what it has been like for the people of Ukraine whose country was invaded by Russia 3 years ago. Laying all the ‘politics’ aside...once again we watch on our TV screens cities being destroyed, buildings demolished, infrastructures being disrupted and countless lives going off to defend their homeland...with thousands of them never coming home alive. We have heard the stories of brutal captivity and rape and abuse that has occurred during this conflict. In fact, with 24/7 cable news and the internet, we are constantly being exposed to wars and conflicts around the globe, and yet here in America, we all most seem immune to such ‘invasions’.

Where am I going with all this today? It’s pretty simple, really...and I don’t mean to speak for everyone here...but having never been in a situation where I was a victim to an ‘invading army’ my whole life...it tends to make one a bit ‘callused’, maybe thinking we are ‘invincible’ or immune; you know...that sense that something like that could ‘never happen to us’.

Imagine being assigned to ‘guard’ some installation that had never before come under attack or had been threatened. It would seem plausible that one might grow ‘relaxed’ or ‘at ease’ in such a role...maybe even dozing off from time to time. And as much as we might all be able to relate to and identify with anyone who did nod off while ‘on duty’ in such a setting...imagine the horror of that one time the unexpected happened...when they least expected it. Have you ever read any of those verses in the Bible that caution us against doing that very thing....’falling asleep’? And for the record, the ‘invasion’ I am suggesting that could happen…has nothing to do with a ‘physical’ foreign enemy. Join me here tomorrow?