The Maxwell chaplains invited the base community to share food and prayer during the annual National Prayer Breakfast hosted at the Maxwell Club April 18, 2018.
The base event is an extension of the National Prayer Breakfast that has been held in Washington D.C., annually since 1953.
During the breakfast, base chaplains shared scriptures and prayers from various religions and backgrounds.
The guest speaker for the event was Chaplain (Brig. Gen.) Steven Schaick, deputy chief of chaplains, Headquarters U.S. Air Force at the Pentagon in Washington D.C.
He began by telling the biblical story of Mephibosheth, a five year-old boy who was permanently injured in both feet while fleeing from those seeking to overthrow his family’s reign.
Mephibosheth was able to escape, but he spent the next 15 years of his life in Lodebar, the place of nothing.
Schaick then moved onto another story, his own.
He said when he was a boy he raised his hand in class to spell out a simple word for his teacher and classmates, a word in which he spelled incorrectly and caused the whole class including the teacher to laugh at him. He said his ran out of the classroom and right into “Lodebar.”
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve been trying to shake my Lodebar experience for 50 years now, they don’t just go away,” Schaick said. “And you know being a chaplain now for almost 30 years I’ve sat knee-to-knee with thousands of Airmen, which has been a great privilege, and over the years I’ve yet to find someone who has not, at some time in their life, visited Lodebar.”
He then finished the story of Mephibosheth, which ends with him moving out of Lodebar and moving into King David’s castle.
Schaick said it’s easy to see King David as the hero, but he believes the real hero is Mephibosheth, because he took the biggest risk of his life in accepting the generosity of someone and leaving all he knows behind.
“The word courage comes from the Latin word for core, which is where we get the words cardio and cardiology, that sense of heart,” he said. “ In the sense of the word courage there is a sense of heart. There’s something deep inside of us that is impermeable to situations, in fact it glows the brightest during the hard times.”
Col. Eric Shafa, 42nd Air Base Wing commander, gave closing remarks and thanked Schaick for his inspirational message.
“I can’t think of a better way to begin the day than to have fellowship and to be able to break bread together,” said Shafa.
Shafa ended the event by saying the National Prayer Breakfast served as a reminder for not only what it means to wear the uniform, but what it means to be a team together.