Memorial Day

On this Memorial Day, as war rages on our globe, let us remember the high cost. The picture could be from the blitz in London during the 1940s, or of Syrian kids fleeing the explosion of a car bomb; the faces are the same. They are terrified, confused, wounded, and innocent. War is not parades and banners waving. War is destruction; displaced people (over 8 million displaced from Syria alone); missing limbs, funeral after funeral after funeral, and the extinguishing of lives created in God's image. This happens on all sides of a conflict, not just America. These are human beings with families. When a Syrian kid watches her father be killed in front of her, she cries. That mother and her children hiding in a cave on Okinawa during World War II were scared. The parents in Iraq who lost a child to a bomb feel a loss so deep, the pain will never go away. The wife in America whose husband was killed by a roadside bomb sits next to his headstone with their newborn baby as tears stream down her face. On this Memorial Day, let us get down on our knees and pray for hearts to change and be softened, ours included.