You faithful few are less than 100 and I know who you are. My subjects vary from quirky ideas to maybe a stop and consider moment ,and I don’t know who reads and who just shakes a head and moves on. This morning I couldn’t just choose an idea and go forward. Headlines screamed about two daily major wars in the world that are more than just fodder for future history books.
WWII was my active war if that is the correct way to define it. I was 4 – 9 years old and knew specifics in a pre-television days from American heroes war movies. None of my family was actively involved and praying at church for families we knew was my involvement. That distance from the action continued through my life. My husband never left stateside after officer training school for the Korean conflict. Our boys were a miss draft generation. My first involvement for a feeling of this is real was teaching middle school the morning of 9/11. We sat a group of 6th and 7th graders in the hall, told them they could go home when their parents came, and sat with them as they were checked out.
Even after that moment, I have been spared the tension of daily waiting news from family or closest friends. Only small happenings bushed against me. One of my co-teachers told of singing hymns as he made his way up hillsides in Vietnam. I held hands with a friend who had two sons who each went back for second tours. My feelings, sadly, about wars were more we’ve made a political mistake than a death and defending relationship. In the last two weeks, our church had an in house interview with David French where he mostly focused on living in peace with those who differ from our ideas. He spoke of volunteering to Afghanistan when he was 37 because of patriotic feelings. I came to a full stop and paid attention when he spoke of riding in on a helicopter, and he said, “I was scared! It’s all an adventure until we are there.!”
Go back to paragraph one. My life is safe and predictable on Swift Blvd., yet the world is shrinking and danger is not far away or slow to arrive. I have lived with the results of the Ukraine and Russia because I have people whose names I know in Moldova who are taking in or trying to send help to neighbors across a border. Then Saturday a full scale war began between Israel and Hamas. The result of my culture and spiritual choice coupled with unbelievable horror have almost created the feeling that Israel is my country, or should be, yet that is not the whole story that brought retaliation to this point. I have no concluding sentence that comforts me or justifies your adding my angst to the sunshine of your day. I reach out to the same source that made me want to choose sides, hoping these words will help direct me to a standing place in what seems like on-going conflict.
And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.Matthew 24:6-7
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” Matthew 5:9
Let Me Tell Ya 