The hope of a soldier...

Most of what I read for fun is by David Weber, a space opera/military Sci-Fi author. In one of his series two star nations have been fighting a war for something like twenty years (the series covers the whole war), and we meet a wide selection of characters from both sides of the conflict. One of them, the lead, is Honor Harrington. She has a friend, a Treecat, who follows her through out her life. He has two names, the one humans have given him, Nimitz, and the one he was given by his fellow treecats, Laughs Brightly. (The name makes sense in context). Being a race of telepaths, Treecat names are based around their character and nature. Treecats began to name "their" humans in the same fashion before they learned the English language, and the results can be... interesting.

One of Harrington's main opponents is/was Thomas Theismen, and I don't want to spoil the series for you, so I won't gave rank or situation, but Nimitz had a chance to name him. It took a while to get to know him, but Nimitz called him "Dreams of Peace."

One of the few men who can fight Honor to a standstill (no mean feat, that.), who has devoted his life to his nations navel service and is responsible for untold numbers of deaths to Honor's allies, and his name is Dreams of Peace?

And yet it is so fitting. How many of our soldiers fight because they want to stop the violence? If we can stop "the bad guys" over there, they won't disrupt the peace here. And isn't that an admirable goal?

Scripture has called us soldiers for Christ, to fight for His peace, and to bring it to the world. It is hard to wrap my mind around that, especially when we also think of Christians as being a peaceful people. Fighting is so contrary to that image.

I think often it is a matter of who we bow down to. Many soldiers in Libya and Egypt were bowing down to a tyrant, and horrible things happened. Syria and Iran are suffering under a military bowing down to evil men. American soldiers are not infallible, and I am sure some of them are bowing down to selfish desire and evil men. But I believe many of our Service Members, men and women in our uniformed services, bow down to something or someone good. Maybe it is the love of family, maybe it is belief in our Constitution, maybe it is our Lord Jesus Christ. But when we bow down to God, His Son, heeding the voice of the Holy Spirit, good things come of it. Joy, hope, love. It should be the desire of every soldier to bow down to God first, even if it means fighting a physical or spiritual battle.

And as soldiers of Christ, we are called to the same.

I cannot claim to be good at it, I know I am not. I am a poor soldier at best, but I can hope to be better. I can try. I'm holding on to that for now.

Found this image today. Thought it was worth sharing.

http://www.mcnaughtonart.com/