Veteran's Day 2023

 This weekend we mark 105 years since “the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month” or Veterans Day – “the end of the war to end all wars”…   Now we know that the end of that war only paved the way for the next war to come.  And on and on it goes.  That’s actually why the name was changed in 1954 to Veterans’ Day – to mourn and to give thanks for all the lives lost to war – because clearly war had not ceased in our world. 

 

There is a lot to mourn right now – the staggering loss of life, the constant barrage of insults hurled at whoever doesn’t see things the way I do or you do or he/she does.  One thing I do know…  violence begets violence.  Just as the outcome of WW1 set the stage for WW2 which pushed us into Korea, the cold war, Vietnam, Kosovo, Granada, Iraq, Afghanistan and dozens of other places – violence between gangs, political groups, family members, countries, religious groups – all that violence sets the stage for even more violence.  “You kill my child and I’ll kill two of yours”   “You attack my land and I will blow up yours”.  The only way I can imagine for that cycle to stop is for someone to say “enough is enough, I am grieving, but I will not strike back”  I believe with all my heart that Jesus is saying to us that forgiveness driven by compassion is the only way to overcome hatred driven by fear.  But, Lordy, who is willing to be first?   I want to share a portion of an op ed sent to me by a prayer buddy…

 

 The United States Congress declared that the date “should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations.”

A day of thanksgiving: for the service of veterans, living and dead; for the service of  caregivers...

A day of prayer: for people of all faiths (or no faith at all), a time of prayer, meditation, or reflection on the stillness of armistice…

 

A day of exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations: …

  

...To  sing with our ancestors  that  we,  too,  will lay down our swords and shields, “down by the riverside, and study  war no more”  —

 

May God’s peace be with you on this Veterans Day, this Armistice Day, and may we lay down all of our arms, all of our burdens, in God’s great Shalom rising up even now, like soldiers climbing out of trenches  a century ago.

Excerpted from ~ The Salt Project, www.saltproject.org, 11/3/2020