In 1862 during the Civil War, Union Army Captain Robert Ellicombe was with his men near Harrison's Landing in Virginia. The Confederate Army was on the other side of the narrow strip of land.
During the night, Captain Ellicombe heard the moans of a soldier who lay mortally wounded on the field. The captain risked his life to bring the stricken man back for medical attention.
Crawling on his stomach through the sporadic gunfire, Ellicombe pulled the soldier toward his encampment. By the time he reached his lines, the man, a Confederate, was dead.
The captain lit a lantern. He caught his breath and went numb with shock. In the dim light, he saw that the soldier was his son. The boy had been studying music in the South when the war broke out. Without telling his father, he enlisted in the Confederate Army.
The following morning, heartbroken, the father asked permission of his superiors to give his son a full military burial despite his enemy status. He asked if he could have a group of Army band members play a funeral dirge for the son at the funeral. That request was turned down since the soldier was a Confederate.
Out of respect for the father, they did allow him one musician. The captain chose a bugler. He asked the bugler to play a series of musical notes he had found on a piece of paper in the pocket of his dead son's uniform.
This music was the haunting melody we now know as "Taps" that is used at all military funerals. Its words are little known: "Day is done, gone the sun, from the lakes, from the hills, from the sky. All is well, safely rest. God is nigh."
Some of the hard questions we often ask are these:
-- "What happens when God does not answer my prayers?"
-- "What good can come from bad in my life?"
-- "Should I pray for God to intervene and remove difficult things from my life?"
-- "Is God truly nigh?" Read more
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