Category Archives: Daily Prayers

This prayer is little out of order. I decided to put it here as a date-related commemoration rather than when it was prayed during deployment, which was right before we left our home waters after completing our certification to deploy. The crew had proved that they could fight the ship in a variety of warfareContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 12 April”

I can’t say if it is a growing trend, but it is certainly very common that the young men and women I counsel often tend to think that a change of scenery will solve all their problems. “If I could just get out of here.” It is a product of self-centered thinking that looks toContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 9 April”

One of the nice things about being a chaplain is that the Sailors will often let me participate in some of the work that they have to do. Not all of it, I found, because it seems there are just some things that a Sailor won’t let any officer do. But walking around and checkingContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 8 April”

I suspect that if you asked most Sailors who the Father of the Navy was, most would say John Paul Jones, who is certainly the most famous of the colonial era captains, and like today’s hero was not born in America, but in the British home islands. But only the subject of today’s story wasContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 7 April”

I often come back to the Civil War, because I believe that one must have a good grasp of what happened in America in the late 19th century to truly understand what and who we are as a nation. The biggest thing, put simply, is before the Civil War the United States “were,” after theContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 6 April”

It is shocking to behold the level of ignorance most people have these days for things once considered part of the warp and woof of American life, especially religious life. Even religious Christians are often hard-pressed to answer basic questions regarding their own faith, let alone that of other traditions. So, I make it aContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 5 April”

No matter where I am, MLB Opening Day is a big day for me. Even on deployment I take with me digital versions of all my baseball movies and a few historic games saved from YouTube. Deployments are certainly different these days than they were back in my enlisted days. The nice things about storiesContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 4 April”

While I admit this tie-in might be a bit of a stretch, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that speaking the truth has become surprisingly difficult to do any more. Ironically, though young people say they value authenticity, they don’t see a contradiction in lying when the motive is deemed appropriate. We don’tContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 31 March”

Few people have less control over the circumstances of their lives than young enlisted Sailors, especially ones assigned to a ship, and especially when that ship is on deployment. They describe the resulting confining feeling to me as “like being in a prison.” It isn’t just young Sailors, though, who can feel trapped by theirContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 30 March”

I am a big fan of Mike Rowe. One of the things on which we agree, but he manages to articulate much better than I could is the obsession we seem to have these days around safety. He calls his idea “Safety Third,” and I agree with him that our obsession with safety has becomeContinue reading “Daily Prayer, 27 March”