Paul Kimball
Today, in church, we celebrated as, I suspect, did many churches in White County, Veterans Day and acknowledged the debt of service and sacrifice our vets have made over our nation’s history and continue to make.
Here’s a prayer from our service:
O Lord, on this election week, we remember before you with grateful hearts the veterans of our country who in the day of decision ventured much for the liberties we now enjoy. May they inspire our own courage and resolve, as we seek to be the nation of justice, wisdom, and peace, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
The theme of this prayer resonated with me as I have been thinking about the juxtaposition of the culmination of a highly contentious presidential election along with our national observance of Veterans Day. We’ve collectively allowed ourselves to get caught up in the vitriol and derisive perspective of opposing political viewpoints to the exclusion of the great underpinning of freedom that has been the hallmark of our nation for almost 250 years – a freedom fought for and too often died for – on the backs of our valiant veterans who forge that freedom and keep it burning as a beacon of hope for all us citizens.
I don’t know what it’s like to be a veteran. I never had to make that decision for myself nor was I moved to enlist in a service branch. But others have taken the mantle on for us; for those of us who lead our daily lives in a kind of quiet oblivion to the real and present dangers that surround us.
The freedom, prosperity and power our nation enjoys is despised by many. We have enemies that are public and demonstrative in their desire to destroy us and bring our way of life to its knees.
The men and women who serve in our armed forces, those whose names we do not know and never will, are the vigilant defenders of our freedom. Each has pledged to make the ultimate sacrifice so that you and I are spared that reality.
Our veterans who have endured combat have no doubt witnessed, and been assaulted by, life-altering experiences that the rest of us can’t begin to comprehend. Too many don’t make it out of the fray.
I request of our presidents, as commanders-in-chief, that the most difficult and personally wracking decision they ever make in office concerns the deployment of our soldiers into armed conflict. To engage in a war should always be the absolute last option; after every attempt at diplomacy has run its course. The need to take human lives as a justified conflict resolution for whatever disputes countries have among themselves strikes me as a legacy barbarism we sanction even in the 21st century.
Those who choose to wage war do so largely from a vantage of sanctuary; those who fight wars do so in a hellish landscape where the imminent threat of death intrudes on their every hope and dream for their lives and the promise of sharing that life with their loved ones.
So yes, when we honor our veterans, we aren’t just honoring a debt of service, a willingness to suspend the course of their lives, a willingness to lay down their lives in defense of ideals they deem worthy of that full measure of sacrifice. We honor veterans with a pledge to “seek to be the nation of justice, wisdom and peace….” To do less is to dishonor those who gave all; to do less is to fail to appreciate the full import of their sacrifice.
Paul Kimball is retired and lives with his wife and two dogs in the beautiful mountains of Sautee Nacoochee.