Greetings Comrades, as we prepare to celebrate our Nation’s 250th birthday, I thought I would share a story about a young patriot.  History books often focus on the faith of generals and founding fathers, but I believe that the true spirit of the American Revolution lived in the grit of the common soldier.

To understand the raw faith that built this nation, we have to look at the journal of Private Joseph Plumb Martin, a Connecticut youth who enlisted at just fifteen years old and served for the duration of the war.

In November 1777, Martin’s faith was forged in the absolute crucible of Fort Mifflin on the Delaware River.  A small American garrison was tasked with holding off the entire British fleet.  The conditions were brutal.  Martin recalled being completely barefoot in the freezing November mud, shivering, and utterly starving while enduring a relentless, weeks-long bombardment that literally leveled the fort’s wooden barracks.

During the height of this terrifying cannonade, the fort's flag was shot down.  The officers needed someone to climb up and fix the colors to signal for assistance—a task everyone knew was a suicide mission.

Martin wrestled heavily with his own fear, staring at the flag and debating whether he should volunteer.  Before he could make his move, a sergeant stepped forward to take the risk, hoisted the flag, and was instantly struck down by enemy fire.

Reflecting on that profound, hair's-breadth moment of mortality, Martin didn't credit his survival to dumb luck or coincidence.  He wrote with deep humility that his life being spared was ultimately "ordered by Divine Providence."

For Martin and his peers, the greatest test of faith wasn't just facing enemy grapeshot; it was enduring the agonizing, day-after-day lack of basic necessities.  Weeks later, after marching through freezing conditions on bleeding feet, Martin finally managed to secure a meager meal in a local village. Surrounded by the devastation of war and half-dead from hunger, he didn't tear into the food like an animal.  Instead, he paused entirely to offer what he described as "a very short grace."

For the frontline soldier, faith wasn’t an abstract theological concept.  It was a practical, quiet anchor that kept them from deserting when they had absolutely nothing left to hold onto.  It was the belief that God was actively present in the hunger, the cold, and the gunfire.