This reflection was written by Marc Potvin for this week’s Wingèd Ox, a weekly news digest distributed to the college community. You will find reflections from previous weeks here.
We are one week away from Remembrance Day. For some, this day of commemoration of the war dead is seen as a day to glorify war. From my perspective, it is far from it. It is rather the opposite. Remembrance Day is a time to remember the horrors and high cost of war.
At the end of the Great War in 1918, most of the returning soldiers had a sense that what the country had asked them to sacrifice would soon be forgotten. Life would return to normal and the atrocities that had been witnessed by the men and women in uniform would never be spoken about again. Even worse, those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, never to return home, would have the memories of their lives and what was asked of them erase.
Remembrance Day was created so they would not be forgotten and so that the country would not forget the high cost it demanded of its citizens in time of war. It was created so that never again would there be a war as devastating and senseless as the one that ended a short time before. Yet, on each Remembrance Day, the list of names that we remember across Canada and the world grows longer. I ask myself, why?
Of course, the short answer is sin. We covet power, we take revenge for the wrong done to us, we dehumanize others who are different from us, we point fingers and invent ills to prove we are right, and the list goes on.
War affects more than those who wear a uniform. It affects families. It affects those who are caught between factions. It affects multiple generations. And ultimately, it affects our relationship with God.
When the two minute of silence will be observed next week, I will pause to remember Corporal Michael Abel and Sergeant Fernandez who were both killed while I was in Somalia and Corporal Scott Smith, whom I serve with in Somalia but died in Rwanda, and Sergeant Major Hanni Massoud, Warrant Officer Frank Mellish whom I also knew in Somalia and were killed in Afghanistan. I will remember the many who returned from deployments, psychologically broken and their families, many of which broke apart under the strain. I will remember whom I was privileged to serve as their minister who experienced wars, whether in uniform or not. Above all, I will remember that war is not glorious but rather a symptom of humanity’s brokenness and our desperate need for God.
“Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon (Isaiah 55: 6-7).”
Marc Potvin, Director of Field Education