LEST WE FORGET

LEST WE FORGET

Friday, November 11, 2016

Mark [ESV] 12:28-31 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, "Which commandment is the most important of all?" Jesus answered, "The most important is, 'Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these."

John 15:9-13  As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

  This day, 11am, 1918, silence came to the battle ravaged people and places of The Great War. Though now deemed Veterans Day, for me it is also Armistice Day, for James Robert McGee remains one of my heroes . . . and ever-present mentor to boot.

  Grandmother Ida Mae (Crow) McGee and her youngest son, my dear Uncle Jim, were supported by Dad and Mom. My parents took them in not long after they married in 1935. Grandmother a widow left with meager resources. Uncle Jim shell-shocked as reaction to trench warfare involving multiple wounding and death of boyhood pals in his hometown unit. Though he tried, as a very gentle man he could not cope with the inherent stress and fun harassment of employment. A dependable man of deep integrity, his pittance of a monthly V.A. stipend was partly invested to few days of escaping by alcohol.

  I loved Uncle Jim dearly. Not working outside our home, he was there with us boys when Dad and Mom worked. Finally he physically died in 1981 at age 81. (The Great War began July 28, 1914. Using this and Armistice date you see that Uncle Jim was a mere lad with rifle and grenade in hand.)

 

Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history.^[5][6] Over nine million combatants and seven million civilians died as a result of the war (including the victims of a number of genocides), a casualty rate exacerbated by the belligerents' technological and industrial sophistication, and the tactical stalemate caused by gruelling trench warfare. It was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved.^{[7] (Source: Wikipedia)}

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