They also serve..

We just had a week-end holiday and the “c” word needs to be commemorate, maybe with the third verse of the National Anthem.

0 thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand  Between their loved home and the war’s desolation. Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n rescued land  Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,  And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Wars do happen, and we hope the side we are on is just, and that those who have given us the chance to try to do better have been brave and noble. No issued uniforms, yet the women and children have also done their part to try and maintain a new normal.  We have various large congregation pictures of our church. The one from 1942 is almost all women and children.  The men were at war.  Yet, because they were gone in that year, future pictures have new faces to remember ones of the past.

Each of us has some tie to some war.  My dad served in WWI. I heard his stories of troop ships going to Europe and bought poppies to wear on November 11 for Armistice.  He died at 96 on November 11 and Mother commented, “He would have been so proud to know that.” Memorial Day in May is tied to all American servicemen who have died. At an earlier time families gathered that weekend to clean cemeteries, living caring for the place of the dead.  My husband was stateside during Korea, and our family has been the wrong age for more recent conflicts, a slight word for horrific happenings.

The hymn Onward Christian Soldiers is out of favor for some, yet the battle of good and evil is the final picture in Revelation. We shudder still with current news and unwished for possibilities and pray for a time when lions will lie down with lambs. With hope, we hear again these words. 

Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.  John 14:27