Onward” is an adverb without a modifier, a one-word command that wins battles, galvanizes entire platoons, inspires people to achieve great exploits beyond what they ever imagined and leaves no room for failure.

It kept Columbus sailing westward when he didn’t know where he was going and where he was when he got there. It took Christian missionaries to every part of the globe. It was the solemn watchword of William Booth who founded The Salvation Army. Onward! became the battle cry of Marines who drove the enemy from Japan, Korea, the Islands of the Pacific and Europe and won the Second World War. It was the shout beneath the flag as it was raised on Iwo Jima, and the unuttered prayer of Ronald Reagan when he shook hands with Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykyavik, Iceland and ended the cold war. And it’s the cry today of every devoted father, mother, inventor, missionary, doctor, nurse, teacher and writer with love for their children.

Gina Gippner hoisted this word onto her book as the only fitting tribute to the broad swords and bayonets of God’s Word in tribute to her son serving with the Marines in the Middle East. It fittingly describes the Providence that took her son to war, that kept her and her family safe at home, and then reunited them at last.

The diary of a loving mother misses nothing. It records the easy and the difficult, the joys and the disappointments, the sunshine and shadows of life on the road to Life City. Onward! God knows no other direction. You will, too, when you finish this mother’s diary.

-Norman B. Rohrer, Founder, Christian Writers Guild

To Order: Onward by Faith