Remembrance Day at School

As far as it depends on you...

I’ve had several opportunities to speak about Remembrance Day. I’ve known several Veterans from World War 2. A former student in the public school I attended was with the first group of Canadian soldiers to come upon an IED in the early days in Afghanistan.

As a country, Canada has been involved in several conflicts, never as the aggressor, but do what our leaders believed was the right thing to do.

There’s a verse that I think is relevant to us. It says,

Romans 12:18 NIV

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.

We can’t make choices for anybody else, but we can make a choice to live at peace with everyone that we meet.

What would our world be like if people lived by the Golden Rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

When we look at the World Wars or even Canada’s peacekeeping efforts, young men and women went to places to defend those that couldn’t defend themselves. Maybe we will never be in a war zone, but we can look out for those that can’t defend themselves.

Even at school, you can look for someone who needs help. Somebody else who needs a friend, We just need to take a little time to look around and see those around us.

A HUNGRY ENEMY

A woman wrote to "Pulpit Helps" to explain a miraculous lesson her family experienced. During one of their family Bible readings as new Christians, they ran across the verse, "If your enemy is hungry, feed him" (Romans 12:20 RSV). She writes:

Ours sons, 7 and 10 at the time, were especially puzzled. "Why should you feed your enemy?" they wondered. My husband and I wondered too, but the only answer John could think of to give the boys was, "We’re supposed to because God says so." It never occurred to us that we would soon learn why.

Day after day John Jr. came home from school complaining about a classmate who sat behind him in 5th grade. "Bob keeps jabbing me when Miss Smith isn’t looking. One of these days, when we’re out on the play ground, I’m going to jab him back.

I was ready to go down to the school and jab Bob myself. Obviously the boy was a brat. Besides, why wasn’t Miss Smith doing a better job with her kids? I’d better give her an oral jab, too, at the same time!"

I was till fuming over this injustice to John Jr. when his 7 year old brother spoke up: "Maybe he should feed his enemy." The 3 of us were startled.

None of us was sure about this "enemy" business. It didn’t seem that an enemy would be in the 5th grade. An enemy was someone who was way off... well, somewhere.

We all looked at John. Since he was the head of the family , he should come up with the solution. But the only answer he could offer was the same one he had give before: "I guess we should because God said so."

"Well," I asked John Jr., "do you know what Bob likes to eat? If you’re going to feed him, you may as well get something he likes." "Jelly beans," he almost shouted, "Bob just loves jelly beans."

So we bought a bag of jelly beans for him to take to school the next day, and decided that the next time Bob jabbed John Jr., John was simply to turn around and deposit the bag on his "enemy’s" desk. We would see whether or not this enemy feeding worked.

The next afternoon, the boys rushed home from the school bus and...