| Sunny Side Up Nov. 9, 2005 � 2005, Kathleen Gibson Heaven's peacemaking mission I've known a few young soldiers - keen, full of bravado. Cowlicks barely tamed, acne still embarrassing. Some, like Hal*, came back from overseas outwardly unscathed and bounding with curiosity about the cultures and people they met. "Hey, Mrs. G�" he said, over at our home one evening years ago; after he'd returned from a stint in Cyprus, I believe. He sat beside the music cabinet and looked around the living room as though seeing it for the first time, as though he was thinking thoughts he'd never thought before. "Did 'ya know I met some people who worship chickens? Chickens! Rocks, too. They'd likely worship this furniture! What's that all about?" He said it so comically, we laughed. Paul* came back from his peacekeeping mission in Bosnia toughened. "I didn't have to kill anyone, but I could have. There was one time when we came pretty close." "Could you really, Paul?" I said, fearful for this tall, bright friend of our son's; worried at his new hard edge. "Oh, yeah. We were completely trained. And I'd 'a done it without blinking. I mean, when it's either them or me, how much choice is there? You do what you have to, ya know. You do what you have to." You do what you have to. Go over young and soft, come back old and hard. Maybe stretched flat and hard. Still young. Cold. You do what you have to, like Paul said. There's a lot I don't understand about war. Actually, I understand diddly squat about war. But I understand, and accept, that human freedom is always bought with a terrible price. No matter how technologically advanced the war machine, it's still the blood of the once little ones who nursed at their mother's breast that pays the tab. I understand that no matter who 'wins', there are people who love and hurt on all sides - a long bruising hurt that spins into a strangling web of rage. Whole countries wounded. Where's the sense in that? That's what Hal asked when he came back, after he told us about the chicken worshippers, after he'd run out of stories. He looked at us and asked, "Why?" "What do you mean, Hal?" I asked. "I mean, life is cheap. Why are we here? What's it all about, anyway?" I don't remember my answer. Today I'd say, "Hal, another young soldier went to war, years ago, to a place he'd never been to before, farther than overseas �.. And I'd tell him about Jesus, who left heaven to enter earth, a foreign culture, to battle the kingdom of hell and the state of sin that spawns war first of all in men's spirits. Whose death and resurrection, for those who choose to believe, gives life meaning past the grave and all the way to forever. Jesus, God's son, on a mission to bring peace and purpose to the human spirit; not merely doing what he had to, but what he wanted to - for love. *names changed Respond Home |
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