The following story from Jim Wallis in SojoMail is exactly the example of how the phrase “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” is true in a way that most who use it don’t bother to consider.
Christmas in the trenches
by Jim Wallis
“Silent Night,” by Stanley Weintraub, is the story of Christmas Eve 1914 on the World War I battlefield in Flanders. As the German, British, and French troops facing each other were settling in for the night, a young German soldier began to sing “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.” Others joined in. When they had finished, the British and French responded with other Christmas carols.
Eventually, the men from both sides left their trenches and met in the middle. They shook hands, exchanged gifts, and shared pictures of their families. Informal soccer games began in what had been “no-man’s-land.” And a joint service was held to bury the dead of both sides.
The generals, of course, were not pleased with these events. Men who have come to know each other’s names and seen each other’s families are much less likely to want to kill each other. War seems to require a nameless, faceless “enemy.”
So, following that magical night the men on both sides spent a few days simply firing aimlessly into the sky. Then the war was back in earnest and continued for three more bloody years. Yet the story of that Christmas Eve lingered – a night when the angels really did sing of peace on earth.
If only. This is the thing. If Americans Christians were forced to KNOW; yea even to MEET face to face with the people whom they given permission to the military to bomb and shoot in the streets, this would be a more difficult proposition to endure for a sane , moral, comapassionate person.
This iraq war blows to smithereens the idea of Bush’s administration claims to be “Compassionate Conservatism’. I do believe that most of his most devoted supporters are, indeed, compassionate (although there are many who are NOT). But those who are normally compassionate are not allowed to see anything that might awaken them to the true costs of war. These costs come home most real in the face of humanity. The Silent Night Story above is the just the medicine needed.
If the world can rally around a tragedy, such as it has with the Tsunami disaster relief, perhaps more people may become aware of the need to fight against the whole premise, “promise” and realities of this war, and move to “correct” as much as can be “corrected”, for the sake of the sanctity of life.
Listen to an NPR feature on this story here