Tag: Veteran’s Day

Thanks To Our Veterans

How do we honor those who have given so much? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Today is a day that we remember our Veterans. I fear in our country we are moving away from that. My boss at the post office at the seminary, which is not an official government post office, hence we are working today, and I realized just a while ago that I forgot that the mail won’t be coming in today. That saddens me that I lost track of that considering my boss and I are both very politically minded.

It’s one of the realities that it’s easy to take certain ideas for granted. We who are Americans live in a country where we can’t imagine anything being any different. Reality will always be the way it is. This country will always be here. I have no guarantee of that. One generation can change everything and more and more I get concerned that that generation has come.

But I don’t give up either. Chesterton said the last thing the pagan Roman Empire did was become Christian, and I keep hoping we could be on the verge of an awakening. Perhaps we have to hit a rock bottom. I don’t know the future, but it is a hope.

Either way, the reason we have lasted so long and any time we will last in the future is because of our veterans. If we did not have people willing to fight for this country, we could not have a country. Such people can be thankful they still can go home and be with their families, but they also have no guarantees of that when they go into battle. They can leave home and have no guarantee that they will be coming back.

I make it a point that whenever I see someone who was in the service out in the public,  I thank them for their service. The same applies to our policemen. There is utmost respect for those who are willing to take a bullet or any other form of death so I will be less likely to. It takes guts. Anyone who is entering this kind of field knows that they can lose it all.

So today, we say thank you.

Courage should be a virtue we as Americans celebrate. It was something that led to the founding of this country. Our founding fathers risked their lives so that we could live free. Signing the Declaration of Independence was essentially putting a target on them. They knew it. They did it.

We are the major beneficiaries of that action. We live in a nation of great freedom today, a freedom that must always be defended, a freedom that I fear is more and more in danger. If we take it for granted, we are only making it far more likely that we will lose it.

If you are one of our veterans reading this, thank you. If you see a veteran today, thank them. They are fine men and women who should get to enjoy a day dedicated to them.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

(Also, I want to let anyone know that if you are interested, I have started a substack for political thoughts. There will naturally be some overlap on both sites, but the substack is a paid service and I wanted to go as cheap as I could on it which is $5 a month, but if someone becomes a Patreon at $2 a month and wants to be a subscriber, I will give a gift subscription.)

 

Thank You, Veterans

Why do we celebrate Veteran’s Day? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Even if someone gives you a gift, someone had to pay for it. Even if it was something someone gave of their own, they sacrificed something. Perhaps they just gave it up or gave away some income they could have got from the gift given.

Today, we honor a gift that has been given to us. Well, it hasn’t been given so much as preserved for us. Our Constitution does not give us a single right. It instead recognizes the rights that we have by virtue of being human beings. It was written to limit the government as to what they could to the citizens.

Our veterans are the ones that are still around that have stood in the gap for us against those that oppose us and would seek to overpower us in some way. The most vivid example we saw of this is 9/11. For many of us that day, our world had a crack put in our security. We are not a nation that cannot be attacked. We definitely can be.

Veterans are the people who have chosen to go and fight somehow on our behalf. Not all fight in the mainlines. Being a veteran doesn’t just mean picking up a gun and going to the battlefield. Some people stay behind and handle medical duties or logistics or anything like that. All give of themselves.

Patton is said to have said years ago that war is Hell and these people willingly go to face Hell. They leave their families behind for a time and they have no guarantee that they will ever see them again. There’s always the hope, but it is never fully known. When they kiss their spouses or children good-bye before they fly off somewhere, it could be the last time that they ever do that.

They sleep in beds away from the ones that they love. They miss birthday parties and Christmases and graduations and perhaps even wedding ceremonies at times. They have to live in conditions that are not the ones they really want eating meals they don’t really choose in a country that they are not familiar with.

Why?

Because they think that there is something greater out there than what they want. They are willing to sacrifice of themselves because they believe there is something greater than themselves out there. They want to make sure that what they value over here lasts, even if they don’t know they’ll get to live to enjoy it.

Every single one of them is a hero then.

My wife got a habit in me and I still follow it. If I am out in public and see a veteran, though this also applies to police officers, I thank them for their service. If I had money and saw them at a restaurant, I would always ask to pay for their meals. These people could use our thanks as well since people don’t regularly do jobs just to get thanks, although some do, but it is always appreciated to be thanked for the service that you do.

Thank you Veterans, for all that you’ve done for us. You have been willing to make the sacrifice and thankfully, you didn’t have to. May today you be honored wherever you go and may you be honored everyday.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

God Bless Our Veterans

Do we pay enough honor to those who have fought for our freedom? Let’s dive into the Deeper Waters and find out.

If you’re in America like I am, today you are to honor the Veterans that you know. Unfortunately, in our day and age, many of us are so self-centered that we really take things for granted. As I’ve said, my wife and I are in the poverty level right now, but you know what? Compared to most people who live in the world today, we are rich. We have blessings. Even if we don’t have much money, we have a place to sleep, food in our kitchen, we can stay warm this winter, and we have each other. To top it off, we have Christ.

Why do we have these benefits today?

We live with them today because others were willing to fight for them.

Now not everyone can serve in the military and not everyone should. When I turned 18, I did make sure to go down and register, but I am one who is not meant to serve unless it’s a dire emergency. I have a steel rod on my spine which limits me physically, I am really very much underweight, and my being an Aspie probably doesn’t help any either.

Yet I fully encourage those who do serve. I make it a point to salute a soldier when I see them.

As you can imagine, I am not a pacifist. I do believe that there are times when going into battle is necessary. It is because people are willing to do that that we are free today. Many times these people walk in our midst who have been willing to put their lives on the line so the rest of us don’t have to, and we don’t give them the proper thanks that we should.

In Deuteronomy, we’re told some standards for a man to avoid battle. One that we would still relate to well today is if someone is engaged to a woman. After all, you could go to battle and die and if that happens, someone else might be married to the woman. How many of us think about that today? These men often go to battle leaving behind the women they love, including in some cases women they’ve only recently married, and have to be without them and know that they might never see them again.

Honestly, I can’t begin to imagine what that’s like. I won’t attempt to try.

So what are we doing to honor them? Do we really take the time to thank these brave men and women? Do we realize that these people are out there facing death in order to make sure you and I will not have to face death that same way? The reason we are here in this country today is because there have been people who have been willing to go and fight for us. Of course, some have died in the line of combat and we honor them on Memorial Day, but some are still alive.

We claim today is the day to honor them.

In reality, every day is the day to honor them.

God bless our Veterans and thank you so much for fighting for our freedom!

In Christ,
Nick Peters