Veterans Day

Below is the address President Woodrow R. Wilson delivered to the United States public on the first Armistice Day (now known as Veterans Day), November 11, 1919:

ADDRESS TO FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN 
The White House, November 11, 1919. 

A year ago today our enemies laid down their arms in accordance with an armistice which rendered them impotent to renew hostilities, and gave to the world an assured opportunity to reconstruct its shattered order and to work out in peace a new and juster set of international relations. The soldiers and people of the European Allies had fought and endured for more than four years to uphold the barrier of civilization against the aggressions of armed force. We ourselves had been in the conflict something more than a year and a half.

With splendid forgetfulness of mere personal concerns, we remodeled our industries, concentrated our financial resources, increased our agricultural output, and assembled a great army, so that at the last our power was a decisive factor in the victory. We were able to bring the vast resources, material and moral, of a great and free people to the assistance of our associates in Europe who had suffered and sacrificed without limit in the cause for which we fought. 

Out of this victory there arose new possibilities of political freedom and economic concert. The war showed us the strength of great nations acting together for high purposes, and the victory of arms foretells the enduring conquests which can be made in peace when nations act justly and in furtherance of the common interests of men. 

To us in America the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service, and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of nations. 

WOODROW WILSON

(Thanks to Wikipedia)

Beautiful words which in hindsight were so very blind to the reality of sin interwoven into the deepest recesses of the hearts and minds of mankind.  I’m grateful for the resolve of men and women who do and have and will serve our country to keep us safe, striving as well to extend the blessings of peace and liberty to other people.  But I don’t trust those good intentions much farther than I can throw them and I trust the lasting results of those intentions even less.  I prefer the words of Psalm 146:

Psalm 146 English Standard Version (ESV) Put Not Your Trust in Princes 146 Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! 2 I will praise the Lord as long as I live;     I will sing praises to my God while I have my being. 3 Put not your trust in princes,     in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. 4 When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;     on that very day his plans perish. 5 Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,     whose hope is in the Lord his God, 6 who made heaven and earth,     the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever; 7     who executes justice for the oppressed,     who gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free; 8     the Lord opens the eyes of the blind. The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;     the Lord loves the righteous. 9 The Lord watches over the sojourners;     he upholds the widow and the fatherless,     but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. 10 The Lord will reign forever,     your God, O Zion, to all generations. Praise the Lord!

(Thanks to Biblegateway.com)

Thank you to all who have, do, and will serve.  I’m sorry it’s necessary.  But it is, and will continue to be until the Lord reigns forever and in all places.