Honor and Qualifiers on Veteran's Day

IN FLANDERS FIELDS

By Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae

Take up our quarrel with the foe
To you, from failing hands, we throw
The torch: be yours to hold it high
If ye break faith with us who die,
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

 

The iron wedge used on the farm, which now acts as a doorstop at his beach house.

This writer, born on a dirt road in poverty-stricken Eastern North Carolina (no power, phone, or water lines) would cut and split wood to burn in the furnaces of three tobacco curing barns, and the wood burning cook and wood burning heating stoves. The same wedge that split the logs, was also used to balance and level. Life's greatest mystery, to the unbeliever, but known to God, is life's inequities. The human mind is incomprehensible. The crowning glory, neurology, sets us above other animals. A pseudo-scientific profession of psychology, mind study, started in the 20th century. In my lifetime, there has been a bombardment of Intelligent Quotients (IQ), polls, contests, political correctness (government and media attempting to control the thinking of everyone.) There is an addiction for popularity, even Christian churches making a beggar of God-- playing games with God--, and actually believing in a spiritual world of supernatural, that one can fool God.

The scariest scripture in the bible is in Psalm 98:

Before the LORD, for He is coming to judge the earth; He will judge the world with righteousness And the peoples with equity.

Psalm 98:9

The old graveyards had as many short graves as long graves-- children and babies who never knew life and older people, so poor that there was no tombstone, or record of them ever having lived. What are the qualifiers? Was there less grief over 100 years ago, with no refrigeration, sanitation, or antibiotics? Children died from food poisoning, mothers from childbirth. What qualifies today's lackadaisical populous, with science-fiction technology, to think that they are more qualified for a lavish lifestyle, more than the hardworking God-fearing ancestor of yesteryear? What qualifies a nation to so inflict punishment on the world, so that mothers and children in Pakistan, and other places, would rather see a dreary day that a sunny day, because drones don't drop bombs on dark days as they do on days with a beautiful, blue sky.

When the first time the word "worship" is used in God's word, Abraham, the first Jew, and richest man in the world, having a son after the age of 100, was approaching Mt. Moriah to offer his only son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. Bible history, gospels, and epistles thrive around the story of this "worth-ship"-- one man's total commitment to God. Two thousand years later, we see Jehovah God's total commitment with His only son in sacrifice on another hill, Calvary. The qualifications for giving "worth-ship" are established. God, with the perfect Garden of Eden, established His rights and authority forever by saying, "Don't touch that tree." There are some things we cannot have. We cannot have it all. Creator God qualifies his creation and creatures.

Recently, this totally-blind, 100% disabled, service-connected, medical officer veteran, who worked, as very few men have worked, to get the schooling and training for my military service, found, as have so many, just how much our government hates us. After 50 years of asking for a player/ instrument that would read books to me (I've never even received a white cane or talking watch from the VA). I wept as I enjoyed this new addition to my life-- thinking how much I could have enjoyed this service over the years. My treatment is nothing compared to the 265,000 buried on foreign soil, wrapped only the flag which they served. At a time when the divorce rate among all citizens is approaching 60%, when last year $4 Billion in tax dollars were refunded to people with false identification, we remember the wives and children of men and women who never knew parenting or home life, simply because they were serving their country and fellow citizens, who in many cases, never appreciate them.

What qualifies politicians, pastors, and power brokers to judge the parents who have given their precious children in military service for your country.

Vietnam was the first war where the dead American military men and women were returned to the homeland. One family, their only son David killed in Vietnam, asked this Army Officer to lead the funeral procession down the center aisle of St. Paul's Methodist Church. I followed directly behind the pastor, Dr. Leon Couch, who was reciting aloud, in his marvelous voice, Psalm 23. I said to David's mother what I had heard my mother say, "'You never have a child to lose.' But, you know the forwarding address of your Christian son."

On Veteran's Day, and everyday, those of us who are still around, still paying taxes, still working, and still honoring God, family and country, are embarrassed to think that anyone would not think that we would not do it all over again.