remembering

this is the prayer that i spoke last year at the veteran's day service here in town.


O God, today we give you thanks for brave men and women throughout the history of our country.

We give you thanks for those who yearned for the ideal of liberty and independence.

We give you thanks for those who struggled to keep a divided country united.

We give you thanks for those who stood against the desires of madmen and their bloody solutions.

We give you thanks for those who answered the call to serve on foreign soil in nations divided by civil war.

We give you thanks for those who came home unappreciated and scorned.

We give you thanks for those who were captured by our enemies and those who were lost and remain missing, but not forgotten.

We give you thanks for those who give aid to our allies, for those who fight to protect not just Americans, but people of all nations, for those who wear a uniform many of us can not.

We give you thanks for those who have paid the ultimate sacrifices so that the ideals of liberty, independence, freedom, and justice are not just ideals we hope for, but realities we live.

We give you thanks, O God, for our veterans who have given of themselves in times of peace and in times of conflict.

We lift them up to you and ask for your blessing on them and on this day of remembrance.

And we pray for a world of such peace that their work and courage will never have been in vain.

Amen.

God's peace y'all