You learn a lot by reading. Both history and novels or short stories can transport you out of today into another time that can give you a perspective on events of the day. Rick Atkinson’s three volume study of the battles of the American Revolution is a good case in point. Moe than a military history, it explores the actions of both militiamen and their leaders and the society they inhabited.
What’s utterly amazing about this read, and it is a long one, are his descriptions of the sheer amount of work it took to manage an army, and what men and women were willing to sacrifice in the six-year long battle for independence. As one soldier, part of the Massachusetts militia wrote his wife,” Having never been in action, I know not what would be my feelings, but I trust in God I shall not disgrace myself, nor dishonor you.”
We are left to imagine how not just this wife, but many others must have felt to receive such a missive. We know that those who were on the home front, so to speak, also faced extraordinary hardships, trying to keep their farms going, even as armies of the King attacked them as well. Presented with a picture of war at the front door, we must wonder how others now with war at their front doors must feel and respond.
Prayer for the Day
O God, we read about the violence of war,
As we wonder how we would survive such terror;
Crying in our hearts, O Lord, we see how it kills,
And wonder if its travails will have an end.
Grant, O Holy One, that we work for a just peace,
Where there is oppression and injustice.
In the name of the One who accompanies us,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
We are all victims of war and we all count.
Maria Ruzicka, aid worker, killed by suicide bomber Iraq (1976-2005)
War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)
Arise, cry out in the night at the beginning of the watches!
Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord.
Lift your hands to God for the lives of your children,
Who faint for hunger at the head of every street.
Lamentations of Jeremiah 2: 19