War

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”

In the Civil War, canons played a huge role in deciding the outcome of battles, and thus, the war itself. Each canon required up to eight men to operate and six…

An outspoken Patriot, Michael Widman hated the British with a passion. However, the Revolutionary War era tavern owner would find himself accused of treason against America and be sentenced to death.

One man would step forward to help…but Widman hated him even more than the Redcoats.

General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of Joint Special Operations Command, was given a monumental task by President George W. Bush: find and terminate Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of a brutal terror network known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

In the summer of 1815, Europe’s eyes were fixed on the small town of Waterloo in what is now modern-day Belgium. There, an English and Prussian coalition bravely faced the army of Napoleon Bonaparte, a Frenchman who’d brought war to the entire continent.

The English were eagerly waiting for battlefield news…but they didn’t like what they were hearing.

Dachau Concentration Camp, 1945. A place of unrelenting suffering and death. More than 25,000 “enemies of the state” lost their lives in this hellish place during the Holocaust. Every prisoner trapped behind the wire jumped at the chance of escape.

Every prisoner except Viktor Frankl.

Where did you meet your spouse? (Fellas, I apologize if I put you on the spot.) Did you meet her at college? Did you find him at church? Elevator? Job interview? Married couples have met in some unique places over the years.

But no one has ever met their spouse in a stranger place than William Tippins.

After President George H. Bush declared war on Iraq in the early 90s, a group of committed Christians in Atlanta gathered to pray. They prayed on behalf of soldiers, governmental leaders, and the future of all nations involved.

But one young man was evidently praying wrong.

In 1940, Langdon Gilkey, equipped only with a degree in philosophy from Harvard, went to China to teach English at Yenching University. Three short years later, he was taken prisoner when the Japanese Army came crashing into the city.

His confinement taught him a powerful lesson: fellow prisoners could be less merciful than the enemy.

How would you respond if someone asked you to describe reconciliation? What sort of picture would you paint? Would you talk about forgiveness? Granting pardon? Showing mercy after wrongs were committed?

Or would you just point to these pictures taken in Africa?