My sense of “seeing God” is about my life experience which happened 56 years ago. But only recently did I see the blessing.

I was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965 and went to Basic Training and Infantry Training at Ft. Dix, N.J. During those 16 weeks of training, I became friends with Bill Callery, who was from Lowell, Mass. At the end of our training, Bill was sent to Vietnam and I was sent to Korea to patrol the DMZ. Within three months, Bill was killed in Vietnam.

In the past few days, I was looking through a book that the Army gave us after Basic Training. There are individual pictures of all 179 of us. Ironically, Bill and I were pictured next to each other, which made it easy for me to imagine that I could have gone to Nam and he to Korea. This made me see that I have so much to be grateful for.

Thank you, God! I owe you!

Now, in Lowell, Mass, there is an athletic field named after Bill, and I am grateful to be right here at St. John the Baptist Church. Amen.