As you may know, today, November 11, is Veterans Day in the U.S.  As most students of World War I are aware, November 11, 1918, marks the day that the armistice of World War I took effect (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month).
     
     All things considered, I would rather the nations of the world never fight again.  I do not live to engage in war and combat, and I do not favor using war to resolve international differences.  Broadly speaking, I do not believe that God does, either.

     Yet wars happen, and many people feel called to or are conscripted to fight in them. Unfortunately, while some survive, far too many do not.  And this doesn't count the untold numbers of civilians who perish, as well.  War's tragedy is immense.  Veterans Day is therefore a mixed bag, a remembrance of a heart aching nexus of duty, honor, suffering, and pain.  When I think about Veterans Day, I therefore think about such things; I think about heartfelt conviction, I think about the subtle character of sin.  I think about the beauty of peace and and the joy of human compassion.  And I wonder how God, in Jesus Christ, one day intends to set all these ambiguities right.  And I try to put all of these together.

     It's not easy.  It's not easy to know what, amid the forest, God thinks.  It's not easy to know what eternity, the lens by which all things will be assessed, envisioned, and judged, means.  We live in a riddle.  Yet God is present, in peace as well as war, his love for us ever unchanged.

     And maybe, in all of our human stumblings and beautiful yet flawed rationality, that's what we most need to know.