Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

In my last post, I talked about carrying baggage in war. If ya didn't read it, you should, but to sum up: it's a bad idea.  Now, there IS a way to take loot that's not gonna slow the troops down, and that way requires that the troops trust the leaders. Instead of each individual trooper grabbing whatever was valuable, if everybody agrees that the really valuable items (in the case of Jericho, that would be gold and silver  and bronze and iron ) will all be collected for the common good, then nobody gets distracted when it's clobberin' time, and everybody knows that the good stuff is cared for until it's distribution time. And that's the arrangement we find at Jericho. All it requires is trust. And it didn't work, because there was this one guy who didn't trust the leadership. His name was Achan, which translates as "I'm gonna really mess things up for my buddies because I'm selfish and don't trust Joshua to take care of me" (var...

You know how much weight an infantryman packs? A lot. There are three basic conditions for load classifications: Fighting load, for when imminent combat is expected; the Approach March load, used when they have to get somewhere and take some food along; and the Emergency Approach March load, when they have to carry everything because re-supply may be a problem. Fighting load weight: 62 pounds. Approach March  load weight: 95 pounds. Emergency Approach March load weight: 128 pounds. (For more details, read my source, The Modern Warrior's Combat Load, http://thedonovan.com/archives/modernwarriorload/ModernWarriorsCombatLoadReport.pdf) Now, back in the old days (like pre 1900 for modern armies), the troops frequently supported themselves off the land, both in terms of what they ate and in terms of their pay. Rudyard Kipling wrote about it in "Loot": 'That's the thing that makes the boys get up and shoot.' Now, by the time he wrote it, it wasn't policy of the ...

I go to church with my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa and our two munchkins Kenneth (8) and Alicia (6) on Saturday at 5 PM. That's because our church has services once on Friday, twice on Saturday, and four times on Sunday, and you pick which service you want to belong to based on where your friends are, or when the youth meet, or when you want to go over the river and through the woods to visit somebody. Each service has a different name; the name of my service is Five Alive. Last week, it wasn't easy getting to church on time on Saturday. I had a really good reason to be late, but my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa wouldn't cooperate, so that didn't make us late. So then Vanessa had a pitiful reason to be late (stopping to buy food for home group), and I cooperated, but she was pretty quick, so that didn't make us late. So even though it wasn't easy, we weren't late. Or not by much. But then Vanessa sat way in t...