PATRIOTS IN A LOSING WAR

Next Wednesday, Mar. 29, is National Vietnam War Veteran’s Day. A day designed as a national celebration of selfless soldiers in a losing war is largely ignored, stifled by the pain of remembering. The image of the last helicopter evacuation from a rooftop in Saigon torments a generation of the national psyche. Perhaps I was too close to it to be objective, but it sure seems that in that sad chapter of our history the stabilizing norms of national unity began to shift and the fundamental question of what it means to be an American became the divisive issue of the age that has only grown to this day.

Few beyond those with severely pruned or battle-scarred family trees will give the day a second thought, if at all. John F. Kennedy said after his ignominious defeat at the Bay of Pigs, “Victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan.” But that disaster was a tempest in a teapot compared with Vietnam, then amplified by Afghanistan, all in one lifetime. We are an incorrigible people, but God’s Word made that clear long before the USA was a nation. Like my Old Testament heroes Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, I have not lived through my nation’s noblest era … and for the same reasons. But their Sovereign God is mine and we know how the history he wrote ends: Victory in Jesus!

Dear fellow Viet vets, a patriot is no less a patriot when he fights in a losing war—arguably more so. Would that America had political leadership worthy of its warriors. There’s a higher judge than those who screamed epithets at you when you came home. Our Sovereign God will be on the throne regardless of the outcome of this frenzied experiment in self-government by free people, and one day every knee shall bow before him (Isaiah 45:21). Onward, Christian soldier!

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever” (Psalm 45:6).

See you in church.

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