The Prayer That Saved Seventy-Five

In the 2016 film Hacksaw Ridge, Andrew Garfield portrays Desmond Doss, a combat medic who enlisted in World War II but refused to carry a weapon. His fellow soldiers mocked him. His commanding officers tried to force him out. They called him a coward.

Then came Okinawa. American troops scaled a sheer cliff to face entrenched Japanese forces, and the battle turned into a slaughter. When the order came to retreat, the surviving soldiers rappelled back down the cliff. But Doss stayed. Alone on a battlefield littered with wounded men, he crawled through smoke and gunfire, dragging one soldier after another to the cliff's edge and lowering them to safety on a rope. Each time he reached another broken body, he whispered the same desperate prayer: "Lord, help me get one more."

One more. Then one more. Then one more again. By morning, he had saved seventy-five men — without ever firing a shot.

Courage does not always look like charging forward with a sword. Sometimes it looks like staying behind when everyone else has fled. Sometimes it kneels in the dirt and prays.

The Almighty does not ask us to be fearless. He asks us to be faithful — to keep reaching for one more person, one more act of obedience, even when the smoke is thick and the odds are impossible. "Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go" (Joshua 1:9).