In days to come

   the mountain of the Lord’s house

shall be established as the highest of the mountains,

   and shall be raised above the hills;

all the nations shall stream to it.

   Many peoples shall come and say,

‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,

   to the house of the God of Jacob;

that he may teach us his ways

   and that we may walk in his paths.’

For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,

   and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations,

   and shall arbitrate for many peoples;

they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,

   and their spears into pruning-hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

   neither shall they learn war any more.

Isaiah 2

I came upon “A Brief Theology of Veterans Day” and I found it so moving, I wanted to share it with you.

November 11 is Veterans Day (although it is being observed today), originally “Armistice Day.” On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month (i.e., November 11, 1918), the truce was declared that ended World War I, then known as “The Great War” and “the war to end all wars.”

“Armistice” is from the Latin arma (“arms”) and sistere (“stand still”). Imagine the stillness, the quiet that came from laying down weapons on both sides, after years of grueling, bloody trench warfare.

The United States Congress subsequently declared that the date “should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations.”

Sadly, it was not “the war to end all wars” – and so in 1954, the day was renamed, “Veterans Day” in order to honor veterans from all the wars since, not just World War I. But the words of Congress still resonate, as do the holiday’s origins in that great stillness.

A day of thanksgiving: for the service of veterans, living and dead; for the service of caregivers – doctors and nurses and chaplains and mental health professionals and spouses and family members and friends – who walk with veterans through the ravages of war, even after the bullets and bombs and missiles stop flying; and for the days of peace that come at long last.

A day of prayer: for people of all faiths (or no faith at all), a time of prayer, meditation, or reflection on the stillness of armistice, so that the days of peace on Earth increase, and the days of war decrease.

A day of exercises designed to perpetuate peace through goodwill and mutual understanding between nations: for all of us to find ways, large and small, to build bridges across lines of difference, suspicion, or hostility, in our neighborhoods, our country, and among the nations of the world.

To lay down our arms. To step into a new stillness together. To sing with our ancestors that we, too, will lay down our swords and shields, “down by the riverside, and study war no more” – so that the next hundred-and-one years may be more peaceful than the last.

May God’s peace be with you on this Veterans Day, this Armistice Day, and may we lay down all of our arms, all of our burdens, in God’s great Shalom rising up even now, like soldiers climbing out of trenches a century ago.