PROVERBS 3:5-6
Mitchell Paige left home and walked 200 miles to the nearest Marine recruiting station in 1936.
His mother packed him a lunch and included the note: “Trust in the Lord, son, and He will guide you always.” Paige found comfort in those words whenever he was afraid.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Paige was sent overseas with the 7th Marines. In September 1942, the unit landed at Guadalcanal. The next month, after all the other Marines in his platoon, were killed or wounded, Paige single-handedly operated four machine guns, stopping an entire Japanese regiment. He later led a bayonet charge against 2,500 enemy soldiers that prevented a breakthrough in American lines and a much different outcome for World War II. Later, Paige received the Congressional Medal of Honor and was the model for the G.I. Joe action figure.
Paige said, “I will never forget sitting in a foxhole, bloody, burned, and injured the morning after our all-night, fierce hand-to-hand battle against an overwhelming Japanese force on Guadalcanal. I was alone except for hundreds of dead bodies of the enemy surrounding me.
I emptied my pack looking for something to stop the bleeding from a bayonet wound and out fell my small Bible. Picking it up in my dirty, bloody hands, I could scarcely believe it when providentially it opened at Proverbs 3 and there were my mother’s words,
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.”
Comments