This weekend our nation will mark ANZAC day. It is an important day within the life of our nation and our local RSL does a wonderful job of helping our community to to mark the occasion.
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However I have to admit to having mixed feelings about ANZAC day.
On one hand war is very simply an awful thing. There is a sense in which those who protest are absolutely right when they say that was is horrible and we'd be better off without it. War causes death and suffering and its impact on the lives it touches stretches far beyond the time of the conflict.
I cannot use ANZAC day as a day to celebrate war or paint it as as a glorious thing as some almost seem to want to do.
Yet on the other hand there is no escaping the fact that at times human evil becomes so unrestrained that we have no choice but to stand up to it.
Who, for instance, could argue that what Hitler was doing could be simply be allowed to continue?
When all else had failed, those who made the decision to march out against him made the right decision.
As I've heard one ex-servicemen put it, "no one wants war but someone has got to do it." There are plenty of times when I am certain that that is sadly right.
So as I consider ANZAC day I feel torn. I feel torn between my distaste for war and my desire to remember with gratitude those who gave of themselves in times when conflict became necessary.
I find myself wondering how I can speak of war in a way that recognises its horrors and the death and suffering it causes while also not wanting to disparage the many people who I am certain have willingly gone to war for the right reasons.
No words no words have helped me process the tension which I feel around ANZAC day than "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." These words were uttered by Jesus and you will find them emblazoned across many war memorials and grave stones. They speak to the actions of Jesus which motivated many people throughout history in times both of peace and of war.
Jesus' words show us that evil must be dealt with.
This is the whole reason that Jesus came into the world. In this world scarred by the great power of sin, Jesus came so that by his death he might free those under are sin's bondage.
Yet the wider context in which he spoke those words reminds me that Jesus did what no one of us could ever do. He came not merely to restrain evil, as war might do for a time, but to defeat it.
These words have enabled me hold together the mixed feelings I have about ANZAC day.
As Jesus was willing to give of himself, even to the point of death, to save us from evil, I can be thankful when others are willing to follow that example.
While I mourn the necessity of war, I can use ANZAC day as an opportunity to pay thankful recognition to those who have been willing to endure it to stand up to genuine evil.
Yet Jesus' words also help me to keep the sacrifice of these soldiers in perspective.
That even the soldier with the most noble of motivations, fighting the greatest of human evils can at best restrain evil for a time.
My hope for an eternal peace lays not in armies, or governments, or any human endeavour but in the death of the Lord Jesus.
And as I look to him, I long for the day in which he makes all things new, and war will finally be no more than a distant memory.