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Ever Upward - Page 2

© Robert Davis

For all their talk of God and holiness, this is the faith that the destroyers do not have and cannot hope to understand--the faith to put out your hand and touch His face. Not because you deserve to do so, nor even expect that He will let you, but simply because He is so marvelous that, like a child with his face pressed up against the glass of a toy store window, you simply can't help it.

We will never be prevented from building such monuments as the Twin Towers, because we have it within us to scrape the sky. We will never be dissuaded from glorious discovery, for we have it within us to venture where only the unknown awaits. And in this purest and most necessary sense, we will never be defeated, for we have it within us to accept only victory.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr. composed "High Flight" while serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He was killed just a few months later, at the age of nineteen. Most of us would reflect on how very tragic was his loss--as indeed it was--because he had his whole life ahead of him--as indeed he did. But the tragedy becomes triumph thanks to a single point of marvelous grace.

In his nineteen years, he had known more of God than the destroyers ever will.

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