MY FATHER’S WAR

MY FATHER’S WAR

There is a PBS program titled “My Grandfather’s War”. I am of the age where it was my father’s war. I am the late child of German immigrants who left Germany before the Nazi regime became unbearable. My father would tell stories of while he worked in Berlin in 1925 he often had to step over dead bodies from the political battles the night before. He and my mother came to America, it wasn’t easy, but they made it. My father was concerned that he would be called to the American army to fight his people, but because he had a handicapped right hand, he could not hold a gun and was not called to fight. My Uncle, who served in the German army, was a prisoner of war captured by the Americans. He spent most of his time in a POW camp in Indiana, for which he was forever thankful. But yet it took him five years to find the remnants of his family in Germany after the war ended.

A question we often ask is: “Why war?” what is happening to our world? Can’t we find a way to live in peace? Perhaps it is because we are so filled with anger that all we can do is strike out. Germany was angry with the treatment they received from the conditions of the of the 1919 treaty of Versailles, thus a new war was created.

Jesus stood before Pilate and he heard the anger of the people, yet HE was not angry but sad because no one seemed to understand or care for what was taking place in their spiritual life. That was over 2000 years ago, so what has changed? Perhaps our anger today is with ourselves. We still have not come to the realization that our spiritual life is the source of love, forgiveness, and salvation and ultimately peace. This season of Easter gives us a good time to reexamine our lives. To recognize our anger and its cause, and to come to the truth of peace in the message of the resurrection, which took place for us to hear and understand today, even if it was 2000 years ago. It is as Simon Peter said: “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life.” (John 6:68)