To honor and remember and to hold in our hearts, thoughts and prayers all those in harm's way in this wartorn world this Veteran's Day.I grew up with a father -- a WWII vet -- who insisted on referring to November 11th as "Armistice Day" in commemoration of the end of "the war to end all wars" -- which, of course it did not. And so he always reminded us -- as we put out the flag on our front porch and headed off to the Veteran's Day Parade -- that it was a day not to glorify war but to pray for peace.
On this Veteran's Day -- with my own son on active duty in Iraq -- I give thanks for my father and his generation and for all those who went before: willing to offer their lives to preserve the peace. I give thanks for my son and his brave colleagues who have sworn to defend the Constitution against all enemies -- foreign and domestic. And I commit to continue to challenge in every possible way the powers which have placed those brave soldiers in harm's way in a war that has nothing to do with preserving the peace and everything to do with the failed policies of a corrupt administration.
Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
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