Thanks to our veterans, including my Dad!

Thanks to our veterans for your military service.

That includes my father.

Below, first, a picture of my dad from his days serving in the Air Force. In the other picture, Dad is seen with his Honor Flight sponsor this September.

Washington, by the way, is Dad’s favorite place. As he told me before the flight, “Any time you can go to Washington, you should do it.”

It was to stoke my patriotism and love for our country’s system of government that he and Mom took me to DC for the first time when I was five. They took us all to many places to foster our love for America: Gettysburg, Philadelphia, Lincoln’s home and burial place in Springfield, Illinois, FDR’s home at Hyde Park, Mount Vernon, Monticello, and many spots here in Ohio.

Referring to my first trip to Washington, I wrote this to Dad before his Honor Flight:

“I know that you also took me because you love our country...not in that jingoistic, nationalistic, we’re-always-right-and-everyone-else-is-always-wrong way that is so sickeningly popular these days. You taught me to revere what this country is really about, a place where our freedoms are guaranteed as much by our mutual accountability under the Constitution and our laws as they are by the military in which you once pledged your allegiance to our country and its laws, even the ones we don’t like. (I remember you pointing out to me when I was little that the oath you took is the same one always taken by our Vice Presidents.) 

“When it became clear to me that you loved Eisenhower--and spoke to me of shaking his hand as he left Europe, where he served as NATO commander, to come back home to run for president in 1952, I came to like Ike too. After lots of study, he’s still one of my own personal Mount Rushmore presidents, along with Washington, Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt. But that started with you! 

“One of the lessons I also learned from you about patriotism is the necessity of civilian commanders-in-chief in our presidents. Even Eisenhower resigned his commission before running, since our military officers should always be apolitical...And you also taught me--and Ann’s dad, a navigator for B-24s in the South Pacific during World War 2, agreed with this--that generals like MacArthur, glory-hounds who don’t care about the non-comms he sent into battle, need to be reined in or drummed out! 

“Anyway, Dad, thank you not only for serving in the Air Force, but also for being such a great citizen, a great American, a great dad, a great husband, and a great guy. As you go to Washington this time, it’s exciting to me that you’ll get to see the Korean and World War 2 memorials. I find both to be deeply moving and I think that you will too. “My only regret is that I won’t be able to make this trip to Washington with you.”

Thanks to all the veterans who served our country in the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, or Coast Guard. And thanks to the vets who, like Dad, came home and taught their kids about our country and its history.

[I'm the pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Today's 11:11, July 23, 2017

I posted a link to an installment of Today's 11:11 over on Facebook and someone asked me what the significance of 11:11 was. Here's what I said, with a few more comments.

Since the advent of digital clocks, 11:11 seems to have always been the readout I've noticed whenever I randomly check the time.

Unless I have a meeting, class, or appointment, I generally don't look at clocks. But when I randomly do so, I often see 11:11.

A friend of mine reports the same experience, which is funny. We're both kind of obsessed with it.

I attach no significance to 11:11, really. It would be just as striking if what I frequently saw was 10:10 or 12:12...and just as meaningless.

But I decided it would be a good blogging discipline to daily post about something that I've read or thought about and post it at the same time every day. 11:11 seemed like a good time to do it. It's a writing prompt, a blogging prompt.

Another reason, I suppose, is that we're in the centennial period for World War 1 right now. It's on my mind. I was always taken with the fact the Armistice bringing the war to an end went into effect at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, November 11, 1918. (Originally celebrated as Armistice Day, November 11 is now Veterans' Day.)

One final reason. There's a tradition among some Christians that refers to the moment of Christ's return as midnight, the end of the old creation, the full institution of the new. All time before that moment is the eleventh hour. We need to live life to its fullest and keep following Christ in the eleventh hour.

Yeah, I probably have given this too much thought. 😀 But all this other rationale came to me after I thought, "I'll be sure to post at 11:11 every night."

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Today's 11:11, July 21, 2017

One-hundred years ago, the Harlem Hellfighters, a division composed of African-American soldiers in the segregated United States Army fought with distinction during World War 1, called at the time the Great War.

The global conflict officially ended at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918.

That's how November 11, came to be known as Armistice Day, later Veterans' Day in the US. It was a day of joy that seemed to hold so much promise democracy, especially in the countries who fought for that system of government according to the democratic vision of President Woodrow Wilson.

Sadly, after the shooting stopped, Wilson turned a deaf ear to the calls for civil rights from the veterans of the war he had sent them to fight.

Some of the heroes who made up the the Harlem Hellfighters, the 15th New York National Guard Regiment, were, after fighting to make the world safe for democracy, on returning home to this nation, forcibly subjected to racism, segregation, and, in several tragic incidents, murder by frenzied white crowds. The federal government, under Wilson's leadership, countenanced lynchings of black citizens by whites, North and South, threatened by blacks seeking equal treatment under the law.

It had been the hope of African Americans across the country that the bravery in service of liberty exhibited by American black men during the war would legitimize their people's place in the United States and lead to fair treatment. Instead, a white suppression of African-American citizens took place which, in many ways, still exists to this day.

As an American and a Christian, that makes me both sad and angry.

[To learn more about the First World War and its aftermath, watch the excellent series The Great War, from PBS.]

Dad

For Veterans' Day, here's a picture of my dad, taken when he was in the Air Force.

Veterans Day Thanks: A Few Thoughts

A picture of my dad, who was in the United States Air Force from 1950 to 1954.

Today is Veterans Day. I remember when my grandparents called it Armistice Day. And that's what November 11 was, originally. The armistice ending World War One went into effect at 11:00 on 11/11/1918.

When the war, certainly one of the most unnecessary exercises of human blood-letting in history, ended, there was a horror at the prospect of ever fighting another armed conflict. The death and destruction had been enormous. War was unthinkable.

The League of Nations, the brainchild of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, meant to help countries deal with their disputes peacefully, was established after the war. But, of course, the United States, sick of its one-year immersion in "power politics" (what Americans called foreign affairs in those days), wanted "normalcy," meaning the country desired to remain isolated from the world. Absent the involvement of the US, the League of Nations may have been doomed from the beginning. (World War One, for the other combatants, by the way, had lasted four years.)

In 1928, a treaty called the Kellogg-Briand Pact was promulgated. In it, nations promised to resolve their differences without going to war. A number of countries, including the United States, ratified the treaty. (The vote in the U.S. Senate was 85-1.)

But within five years, Hitler would be in power in Germany. His chancellorship ended any idealistic notions that human beings, by force of law, could prevent war. Given the aggression of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan, it's hard to see how World War Two could have been avoided. For the United States, any thought of remaining isolated from the war begun by those "Axis Powers" (or from tough, coercive peace-making efforts, for that matter) ended with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.

I've talked in other places about the Lutheran understanding of the Bible's teaching on "the two kingdoms." It holds that God rules the world in two ways. Over His Church, He rules by grace. This is "the kingdom of the right," whose constituents have voluntarily surrendered to the Lordship of Jesus. They aren't perfect. But through "daily repentance and renewal," they seek to live in accordance with Jesus' great commandment: to love God and to love neighbor. They do so not through some coercion, but out of simple gratitude for having been saved by God's grace through faith in Christ.

But because not all people voluntarily live under God's gracious hand and seek instead, to be their own gods, God also rules through "the kingdom of the left." This is the kingdom of laws and armies and coercive power, the kingdom of wars.*

Absent this mode of rule, the world would be a far more inhospitable place than it is. God establishes governmental authority and power to do two things: (1) To keep human selfishness and sin in check; (2) To clear a place of sufficient calm that will allow people to hear His gospel of grace.

Human beings, being human though, will, of course, often give vent to their sinful human nature, turning their backs on the authority of God over their lives, whether they consider themselves citizens of the kingdom of the right or the kingdom of the left. Sin, death, and darkness remain in this world--and in each of us--until the day Jesus returns, the dead in Christ rise, and He fully establishes the new heaven and the new earth.

This means that while peace always remains a worthy goal, we will not always be successful in obtaining it.

Jesus once was describing the signs of the end of this world that He will bring about when He returns. He said that all of the signs of His return had already taken place and that we all should be prepared for the end. And He said: "When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come."

Wars are inevitable because we human beings are sinners.

But on this Veterans Day, as I consider all the warring that my country has engaged in just in my lifetime and all the wars around the world that have happened in that same period, it makes me heartsick. The Korean War had ended about five months before I was born. Since then, America's military has been asked to fight or face hostile fire, most notably, in Vietnam (and Laos and Cambodia), Iraq (twice), and Afghanistan.

Whether all these wars were unavoidable or necessary is a political question. And I have no intention of addressing that here.

What I am saying is that, as a Christian, I'm no peacenik. I don't think that Christians are necessarily called to be pacifists. According to the New Testament, unless a government asks us to act unjustly, we are duty bound to God to serve our government, as though serving God. And that includes assisting in the execution of those wars that the government deems necessary.

But, as I thank the veterans of the military, like my dad and my nephews, for their service to America, today, I also pray that our leaders and the leaders of other nations will be given the wisdom to avoid the use of war in disputes.

No one should be asked to spend their lives in wars that have no good purpose.

Just a few thoughts.

[*The "kingdom of the left" and the "kingdom of the right" have nothing to do with more modern terms for political philosophies. To speak today of people being on the left or the right is to borrow from terminology that originally came from nineteenth century France.]

Veterans Day Thoughts and Prayers

The following is from today's daily emailed inspirations sent by my colleague and friend, Pastor Glen VanderKloot, OnLine with Faith:

November 11, 2009 Issue 525c
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WELCOME to the daily issue of ONLINE WITH FAITH.
ONLINE WITH FAITH is a ministry of Faith Lutheran Church,
2313 Whittier Avenue, Springfield, IL, 62704, Glen VanderKloot, Pastor.

We encourage you to worship and be involved in a local congregation

If you have any questions, comments, prayer requests, or would like to subscribe, please be in touch with us at pastor@faithlutheran.com

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Thought for the Day

As we celebrate Veteran's Day this year, we remember
all those men and women who have served and continue
to serve in our Armed Forces. We deeply appreciate all
they have done to secure our freedom and to keep America
one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and
justice for all.

Dear Heavenly Father,

In every age, You call certain persons to defend
the human family from oppression, tyranny, and evil.
Since our founding as a nation "conceived in liberty,"
countless American men and women have stepped forward
to defend our country and many others from aggressors,
and to liberate those held captive.

Today we respect all our veterans: those who rest in
honored glory, those who still suffer from the wounds
of war, and those who, with us, enjoy the blessing of
living in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O God, thank You for the selfless sacrifice of
these veterans and of their families. Help us to
remember them, to pray for them, and to care for them.
Please bring all our departed veterans into Your Kingdom,
and console their families with Your unfailing love.
Please heal our wounded veterans through the power
of Your Holy Spirit, and give to all our veterans
the satisfaction of having served You even as they
have served us.

Thank You for Your gifts of life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness. May we fight to keep
these rights available to all.
In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

From:
Living Grace
5226 South 31st Place
Phoenix, AZ 85040

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Veterans Day: Thank You

Six years ago, my family and I took a trip to Washington, D.C. Our son, Philip, was in college, our daughter Sarah was about to enter her senior year of high school. We were in the Washington Monument and each of us went our different ways to peer out the windows on all sides of the place.

After awhile, Phil approached me, accompanied by an older man. They had been chatting and in the course of their conversation, the man had somewhat hesitantly revealed that he had fought in the Battle of the Bulge during World War Two. My son wanted me to meet him. We chatted for a few minutes and as we parted, my son shook his hand and told him, "And thank you very much for what you did for me."

The man seemed both embarrassed and appreciative. I can also tell you that I was proud of my son.

And so, learning from his example, I want to tell all veterans who may read this, "Thank you for what you did for me...and for all of us!"