In a film filled with great scenes, Zulu (1964), this scene has always stood out to me:
- [Colour Sergeant Bourne and several other soldiers have brought a drunken Mr. Witt and his daughter to their wagon to get them away before the Zulus attack.]
- Lt. Chard: Keep driving with the sun at your back. Should make it safely.
- Mr. Witt: Sergeant!
- Margareta Witt: Father!
- Mr. Witt: Leave me alone!
- Lt. Chard: Try to understand him, Miss Witt.
- Mr. Witt: Death awaits you! You have made a covenant with death and with Hell you are in agreement! You’re all going to die! Don’t you realize? Can’t you see? You’re all going to die! [Chard whips one of the horses. They start, pulling the Witts and their carriage away.] DIE! Death awaits you all! Die! Die!
- Private Cole: He’s right. Why is it us? Why us?
- Colour Sgt. Bourne: Because we’re here, lad. Nobody else. Just us.
- Lt. Chard: Colour Sergeant.
- Colour Sgt. Bourne: Right. Now, get back to your posts! On the double!
For a Christian, I think, when faced with one of the dangerous situations that fleck this vale of tears, a response I have found inspiring to me is a paraphrase of war poet Rupert Brooke: Now God be thanked, who has matched us with this hour.
Brooke never saw combat, dying from an infected mosquito bite in a French hospital ship moored off the island of Skyros in the Aegean on April 23, 1915. In a dangerous, fallen world men die, and that sad fact is often out of our hands. How we react to peril is always in our hands.
Bonus:
What does it mean, to be a son of the Father?
Who is our brother, the maker of Heaven and Earth? The reliable companion, providence marches with us and the gates of hell shall not overcome us. We are here. Nobody else and everybody else that has ever gone before us. Saint Paul wrote that we have not here a lasting city, but we search for the one to come.
“At that time Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered.”
Amen
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