Today many around the world will pause at 11am today to remember the sacrifice of those who gave their lives in World War One, and in other armed conflicts since.
“The first two-minute silence in Britain was held on 11 November 1919, when King George V asked the public to observe a silence at 11am. This was one year after the end of World War One. He made the request so “the thoughts of everyone may be concentrated on reverent remembrance of the glorious dead“.”
(BBC).
We look back and remember the ultimate price paid by those brave men and women of the armed services, and those who were not in the military but part of the effort, with feelings of thanks and at the same time, of malaise.
Death feels so unnatural to us, I think, because it was never part of God’s plan for humanity (Genesis 1.29, 2.8-9, 15). We think about, we experience, and we move through times of death with a heavy unease and a deep-rooted feeling of ‘this is so wrong‘ because, simply, it goes against our created purpose…it is wrong.
As we remember those who willingly gave their lives to defend and deliver their own countries, and others, from tyranny, oppression, terrorism, injustice, and all manner of evils so we as believers in the Lord Jesus have a Saviour who willingly gave His life to deliver us from evil. His life was given to clear sin’s record against us, and His resurrection now gives us the logical and theological necessity of our own (1 Corinthians 15.12-28).
Greater love has no one than this,
that someone lay down his life for his friends.
(John 15.13)
Let us pause and pray at 11am today to remember those who gave their lives so we can enjoy so many of the freedoms that we do.
Let us pause and pray in the name of the Lord Jesus, the Prince of Peace, that this horrible and seemingly endless cycle of people needing to take up arms in order to wage war against each other will be broken, either miraculously before His coming or as a direct result of it.
James Travis 