The Friends of the National World War II Memorial recently announced the charity had received a $2-million grant that will allow the inclusion of President Franklin Roosevelt’s D-Day prayer on the memorial site.

I was honored to offer the invocation at Colleville-sur-Mer, France, for the seventy-fifth D-Day anniversary memorial ceremony on June 6, 2019. This, of course, is the town name of the place that many Americans know simply by the more infamous moniker of Omaha Beach.

Veterans of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry Regiment, more commonly known simply as the “Ox and Bucks,” hosted our small US military contingent. The locus for the day’s ceremony was the gravesite of Major John Howard, commander of D Company of the Ox and Bucks.

Today should be a reminder, especially, perhaps, to Christians, that sometimes fights need to be fought. We worship a God who mandated governments to use the sword to deploy violent action, in the last resort and in measures sufficient to win the fight, when nothing but proportionate and discriminate force will protect the innocent, take back what has been unjustly taken, or punish sufficiently grave evil.

It was a day, in the words of President Franklin Roosevelt, when “the pride of our nation” began a battle…