March 30, 2024

Hello,

One thing I have noticed more and more over the past few years is the incredible complexity of life. In the same day you can learn of a friend’s pregnancy and another friend’s injury, sickness, or death. The highest and best of human experience is displayed in sharp contrast against the hardest and darkest parts of living in a fallen world. This week, the week between Palm Sunday and Resurrection Sunday, is exactly that for the Church. But more than that, it has also been a week with the full range of experiences at ALERT.

Last week we celebrated Palm Sunday, and then learned in late afternoon that one of our alumni, Zane Schaeffer (Unit 63), had passed away. Zane spent 19 days in the hospital after a motorcycle accident before he passed away. He was an organ donor, so hopefully 8 families will receive new life this Holy Week from his donation. There is such joy for each person who has received a new lease on life, yet that joy is tinged with the incredible sorrow of the family and friends Zane left behind. Please keep them all in your prayers as they grieve his loss.

The next day, Unit 70 started Basic Training. Every R-Night is a hopeful event as we welcome the newest ALERT unit, and look forward to the weeks and months of discipleship ahead. Each time a new unit starts, I look at them and ask myself who the future SDS or SMaj in that unit is. It is a good reminder that, while they may all be recruits today, in a few years they may be the ones running the place. It helps keep me humble (hopefully), and also helps me treat them with more dignity and grace as they make the inevitable recruit mistakes.

Yet even in the excitement of a new unit, we also face the complexities of each individual man coming for training. More and more of our men are coming to us from broken or blended families, or from single parent homes. They are coming with struggles like mental illness, addictions, or histories of substance abuse. As the complexities of life become increasingly evident in the lives of our men, the absolute necessity of God working in and through each one of us in leadership at ALERT becomes ever clearer. Please pray for each of the officers, and especially for all of our NCO leadership, as we try and bring the truth and beauty of the Gospel into each situation that the students in training bring our way. Life is complicated and messy, but Christ is more than sufficient.

In closing, I would like to share the lyrics to one of my favorite hymns. As I look back at the last week, and ahead to the inevitable complexity of the rest of my life, I need to continually remind myself of where my hope truly lies: