Garrett

Geaux Tigers '20

[Echoes of War @EchoesofWarYT]

Four musket balls tore through George Washington's coat at the Battle of Monongahela. Two horses were shot dead beneath him. He rode back and forth across the worst of the fighting rallying broken men, and when the smoke cleared he did not have a single scratch on him. An Indian chief later said he ordered his men to fire at Washington again and again, then stopped, certain the Great Spirit was shielding him.

He was 23 years old. He wrote to his brother a few days later, almost puzzled by it, and said he had been protected beyond all human expectation by the miraculous care of Providence.

And here is the part people forget. That was not the one time. That was the pattern.

At Princeton he rode his horse to within thirty yards of the British line and told his men to hold as the muskets opened up. An officer who was there covered his eyes because he was sure he was about to watch the general die. When he looked again Washington was still sitting tall in the saddle, waving his hat, completely unharmed. For eight years of war he stood where the fighting was heaviest and the bullets simply refused to find him. His enemies started to talk about it. His own soldiers started to believe it.

He was not being reckless. He just never seemed to believe it was his time.

This is the thread that runs through nearly every great man in history. They lived like the date had already been written and no enemy on earth could move it up by a single hour.

Caesar stood on the bank of the Rubicon, looked at everything he was about to risk, and said the die is already cast. Then he walked into it.

Cromwell rode into battle after battle convinced the outcome had been settled long before either army woke up that morning, and he fought like a man who had nothing left to fear because the ending was not his to decide.

Andrew Jackson stood on the Capitol steps while a man walked up and pulled a pistol on him at point blank range. It misfired. The man drew a second pistol. That one misfired too. The odds of both failing were so small that people argued about it for years. Jackson just raised his cane and went after the man himself.

Stonewall Jackson would ride calmly through a storm of gunfire while everyone around him flinched, and when someone finally asked how he stayed so steady he said it plainly. My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has already fixed the time of my death, so I do not trouble myself about it. I am always ready, no matter when it comes.

That was the whole secret. Not that they loved danger. Not that they did not feel fear. They simply believed their steps were already numbered by a hand higher than any king, and a man who truly believes that walks through fire like it is a hallway.

You cannot kill a man before his work is done.

And when you line their lives up side by side, the escapes, the misfires, the bullets that passed through the coat but never the man, it gets very hard to call all of it luck.

[Balogun @balogun]

My debut World Cup… it hurts to wait 4 years to compete at the highest level our sport has to offer. I want to say sorry to our fans it was not good enough when it mattered most and we let you down

Soccer in America will only become bigger the belief, the talent, and the passion is continually growing and I know the best days are in front of us, the future belongs to those who never stop believing, this moment will fuel us. We will be back

Why not us?

For the nation. For the flag.
🇺🇸🦅
B

[USMNT Only @usmntonly]

USMNT fans after the Folarin Balogun red card was rescinded 😂😂😂

[Garrett @GarrettScalia]

@LSUfootball My goat 😩😩

[LSU Football @LSUfootball]

Two months until the Lane Kiffin era officially begins in Death Valley

[Garrett @GarrettScalia]

@LibertyCappy Japan for the Japanese. Its what makes them great.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

America burned Japan's first gift of cherry trees. All 2,000 of them, on President Taft's direct order.

The 1910 shipment arrived in DC crawling with insects and nematodes. Agriculture inspectors condemned the lot, Taft signed off on the bonfire, and the State Department braced for a diplomatic disaster. Tokyo's mayor, Yukio Ozaki, responded by sending 3,020 more, grafted from the famous grove along the Arakawa River.

Those trees have spent a century paying the friendship back.

Four days after Pearl Harbor, vandals chopped down four of them. Park officials renamed the survivors "Oriental" cherry trees for the rest of the war to protect them from axes.

Then came the twist. By 1952 the original Arakawa grove in Tokyo, the parent stock, had nearly died from wartime neglect. Japan asked Washington for help. The Park Service shipped budwood from DC's trees back across the Pacific and restored the grove that created them. When a flood wiped out more Japanese trees in 1982, horticulturists took 800 fresh cuttings from the Tidal Basin.

These 250 new trees solve a real problem too. The Tidal Basin is sinking, and a $133 million seawall rebuild forced crews to rip out roughly 150 trees. Japan offered replacements before anyone asked, timed to America's 250th birthday.

So the genetics run in a loop. Tokyo's grove seeded Washington's. Washington's saved Tokyo's. The saplings going in this spring descend from both.

114 years of diplomacy, running on grafted branches.

[America @america]

Happy 250th Birthday, America 🇺🇸

[Garrett @GarrettScalia]

@Schwalm5132 Exactly. All the airheads cheering for him right now wont be there for him in two weeks. The ucmj will be though.

[Josh Pate @JoshPateCFB]

Made some quick #edits to that red card

[U.S. Soccer Men's National Team @USMNT]

FOUND A WAY THROUGH! 🇺🇸

[Garrett @GarrettScalia]

@infantrydort Retard. Career gone for what? But this is a good example of what the officer corps is. People assume the military is staunchly conservative. Not in my experience.

[Garrett @GarrettScalia]

@Padres Hahahahaha what the heck 😂😂

[Garrett @GarrettScalia]

@macksypowwa Gimme da mote’

[SEC Numbers Guy @secnumbersguy]

Notre Dame fans pointing to their National Championships in the 1940’s after opting out of the Pop Tart Bowl:

[Alyssa Lang @AlyssaLang]

*me opening a bag of cheese*

My dog:

[Garrett @GarrettScalia]

I am unfortunately in love with Sophie Cunningham

[Garrett @GarrettScalia]

@PolymarketSport Hahahaha

[Wes Huff @WesleyLHuff]

If I'm honest this has been a hard season for me lately. I've been struggling with trusting God's timing. I was reminded when reading Psalm 37 today that I am to be still before Yahweh and wait patiently. That Yahweh is good to those who wait for him and seek him, and it is good to wait quietly for God’s salvation (Lam. 3:25–26). This quiet waiting involves hoping in God’s word while the soul waits more intensely than watchmen awaiting morning (Psalm 130:5–6).

I was reminded that prior to preaching to thousands, for a season Peter went back to fishing after thinking he failed Jesus. That Paul sat in prison cells, Lazarus lay in a tomb, Jonah prayed in the belly of a fish, Hannah wept on the steps of the tabernacle, Joseph was locked in the captivity, and Moses stood in the fields of Median herding sheep. All before God made moves in his timing.

Times of waiting, while hard, remind us of the confidence we should have in God’s timing and character. When direction seems slow in coming, we're called to wait for it, assured it will come when the time is ready (Hab. 2:3). Yahweh himself waits to be gracious and show mercy, and those who wait for him are blessed, for he is a God of justice (Isa. 30:18). Rather than taking matters into their own hands, like I often am tempted to do, we are instructed not to repay evil but to wait for the Lord, who will deliver us (Prov 20:22).

Hoping for what is unseen involves waiting with patience (Romans 8:25), and through the Spirit and faith, believers eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness (Galatians 5:5). Waiting involves expectancy and hope regarding events and contingencies still in the future, it's the outworking of a spiritual posture directed at trusting God’s promises and timing rather than our own understanding.

Knowing all of this, writing here on X doesn't make my season of needing to wait any easier, but the consistent, inspired, inerrant testimony of scripture nonetheless gives me something solid to trust in. I am fickle, impatient, and finite. God is trustworthy, forbearing, and infinite. And his timing is right even if I don't know how or when things will happen.