If you can’t go back to your mother’s womb, you’d better learn to be a good fighter.
– Anchee Min
Forty years ago I knew a young minister who was stricken with doubt over something he’d just said during his sermon. So he went to his mentor, the late Pastor Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel, and told him that he’d preached something he felt was true, but hadn’t been well received.
Chuck nodded and replied, “You’ve got to fight for what you’ve been given”, then walked away.
At the time his advice struck me as a little weird – what’s fighting got to do with ministry? But I was very young and terminally naïve, not realizing that fighting has something to do with just about everything. We can object to that, or ignore it, but nothing will change it.
As long as this world is under Satan’s dominion, and as long as our old nature exists, there’ll be battles. Refusing to fight them is as wrong as allowing the bullies to dominate the schoolyard. Somebody’s got to put up their dukes.
There’s honor in that, assuming the situation calls for it and the fighting is fair. So today the banks are closed and school’s out because we’re recognizing our Vets, who said yes to the challenge and didn’t run from the conflict.
Remembering them isn’t asking much, considering all they’ve been and, for that matter, where they’ve been, making today a time to reflect on the nobility of sacrifice, and the misery warfare brings.
Not that I know what literal war looks like, since I was in full time ministry when I was of draft age, so I never saw the Viet Name conflict of my time. But I’m not one to run away from fights. Of course, I’ll avoid unnecessary ones, but as my Dad used to stress: “Walk away if you can, but if you can’t, then fight to win.”
So like most kids, I was challenged (twice, as I remember) during my school years to an afterschool showdown. I showed; my challengers didn’t. Then there were a couple drunken brawls during my backslidden years, which we’ll skip. Other than that, my resume doesn’t include much literal fighting, and for that I’m essentially glad.
But the act of taking up arms to defend your country (and more to the point, the people within it who are mostly strangers to you, yet for whom you are putting your life on the line) is something I’ll never know. That’s real fighting, unlike boyish afterschool punch-outs or the silliness of a barroom tiff. It’s deadly serious and sacrificial, a price paid not just for yourself but for citizens who’ll benefit from your courage without knowing who to thank. Millions of men and women have experienced it. Those who survived carry their scars.
That much I understand, because my late step-father was awarded the Silver Star (the third highest decoration for valor anyone in any branch can be awarded) for his World War II heroism as a Flight Deck Officer aboard the carrier ship Saratoga, which was attacked by Japanese kamikazes. He supervised the evacuation and rescue of the wounded, never bragging, always reluctant to discuss it. In fact, he only spoke to me about it in detail shortly before he died. War is hell, and you don’t have to go to hell to know it’s indescribable.
So today I’m sorry war happens, grateful to the Vets who met its challenges, and full of hate for the sin nature which causes conflicts, which in turn case skirmishes, which in turn cause death. And I’m hopeful today that His appearance, which we expected decades ago when I first Him is, by virtue of those decades passing, all the much nearer.
God bless our Veterans, today and always. God grant them the recognition and rest they deserve. And come quickly, Lord Jesus, Mighty Conqueror and Prince
of Peace.
