This post is somewhat different from the kind of things I normally write about. It’s more serious and maybe it comes from my views on war back in the 60s and 70s when Vietnam was going on. In the unlikely event y’all haven’t heard, there’s a terrible war happening right now in Europe, with staggering casualties, and my thoughts are with those boys on the battlefields. No matter which side they’re on. Hope it strikes home:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. 

Dare to stand and face the stoic reaper; he approaches, borne on a flight of burning metal shards blown nigh from the thunder of an unseen, faraway weapon.  He wears no smile.  He strikes. The rain of warm, scarlet droplets suddenly marking the persons of your companions comes from naught but your own torn and shattered body.  Perhaps you hear your own last agonized scream; perhaps you hear nothing.   

Your time to fall is come, to repose upon this melancholy swath of beleaguered, cratered pasture, a diminutive pitch of earth now coming soaked with dark and boding crimson.  Dare to release your temporal, mortal confine amid somber tendrils of pale cannon smoke wafting over the tracked steppe, as your final breath departs and so leaves the form silent and still forthwith and evermore.  The echo of cannon carries on; that morbid rumble – heard by your ears no longer; felt by your body no more.   

How your mother would grieve to hear the precious son she once nourished at her breast – lies mangled, broken; whose last thoughts wane ‘neath the startled flight of a thrush in his piteous effort to flee from the chaos you could not.  Now, as your form lies motionless upon the mournful, scarlet-spangled carpet of damp grass and ochre leaves, might there be left fleeting memories of wine and mirth and home, or the companionship of a dog or precious children joined for a warm and lighted supper in the aroma of fresh-baked bread?  Is a peaceful evening with your beloved under a canopy of silver starlight dimly woven among ebbing recollections ere your thoughts are completely taken?

Have angels appeared to bear your exhausted soul away from the carnage?  Has the vacant pallid body, waxing cold and mingled with mud, and for all of your short years the fortress of your soul, at last been left behind?   Have you only now come to realize it was never yours; nor was it ever you, and do you feel no loss for abandoning it? Do the anguished cries of your compatriots echo in the place to which you have since arrived?  Or has your spirit, no longer haunted with terror of the long dark stillness, finally come to that unimaginably serene and peaceful shore where angels sing unimaginably beautiful songs? 

You now realize love is the only thing you’ve brought with you. You’ve left love behind as well. It will remain and it will follow. Love takes many forms; perhaps now that this journey is over, you understand.  Or perhaps you simply sleep, at rest from the horrors you’ve endured.  Perhaps a tearful salutation from the heart of someone far away, blessed (or burdened) with compassion for youthful strangers fading in horror on cold, muddy, and blood-soaked fields among terrified and spiritually wounded companions – may serve to impart some notion of understanding; somewhere.  Of sympathy, both to you and to those who love you. Eternally, in God’s children of pure heart love endures, and it shall endure; for God is Love.

Fare thee well for now.  Rest in the peace with which you are blessed.

May you walk in paradise in the blessed company of the Lord Jesus Christ, young friend, forevermore.