The year was 1918. On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in the Forest of Compiègne, World War I came to a close. It had been a harrowing time. For four punishing years, brave young soldiers on both sides of the conflict had taken up arms, and each mother carried a prayer in her heart: “God on high, . . . bring him home.”1 After years of bloodshed and violence, more than 10 million soldiers would not return.
Nations have honored their fallen with Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, and Veterans’ Day. In 1920 the British buried the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, the resting place of kings and queens. That same year the French Unknown Soldier was interred at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, where a perpetual flame burns. In 1921 America paid homage to its Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery with the tribute, “Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God.”
Hope was that World War I indeed would be “the war to end all wars,” yet conflicts continue. Still we seek harmony with neighbors as well as with nations. We long for lasting peace when men “shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks,”2 when the lamb shall lie down with the lion,3 when love shall be the decisive force, triumphant across boundaries.
Is not the substance of a peaceful world all around us in the dignity of each human soul, the power of fellowship one with another, understanding and respect for differences, love of family, and universal hope for the future? These may be lost in conflict, but they are not totally abandoned. Peace begins in the heart of each one of us and in reverent remembrance of those who have served, those who have carried the message of goodwill to all people.
Program #3925
1. Alaine Boublil and Claude-Michel Schönberg, “Bring Him Home,” from Les Misérables (1985).
2. Isaiah 2:4.
3. See Isaiah 11:6