#37 Modern Noble Soldier
– Dr Regeena Kingsley
Good and strong men live by good and strong deeds.
Not for them the vain “image” of glory and fame,
but rather the substance of good, noble and valiant actions
which – even if unseen and unknown – are truly and eternally glorious.
When a soldier says he is fighting for his country, we know exactly what he means. But in fact, “country” is an abstraction. What he really means is that he is fighting for his people, the population of his country.
He goes through horrors, so that the people will not have to. He faces evil, and confronts it head on, so that they will be spared. He suffers agony, anguish, bloodshed and trauma, so that the population at large will not need to face it in their own personal lives.
He walks through fire and flood to save them, to protect them from evil and from death. Indeed, death is his constant companion. He takes life in order to save the lives of others – the lives of the guilty and the wicked to preserve the lives of the innocent and the good – and he risks his own life to do so.
He drinks and absorbs the bitterness of life, confronting the worst forms of evil on this earth, so that others might never have to see or taste it personally themselves.
These few, brave souls – heroes – sacrifice themselves for the many, their hearts, their souls, their energy, their efforts, their bodies, their sweat, their blood, and yes, their very own God-given lives.
This is the great sacrifice of the soldier.
“Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his soul – his life – for his friends” [1], and, for his people.
God bless the soldier at arms – the precious, brave, few.
“The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at Westpoint, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished. But I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular Barrack Ballads of that day, which proclaimed most proudly that “Old soldiers never die [in history], they just fade away”…And like the Old Soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away. An old soldier, who tried to do his duty, as God gave him the light to see that duty.”
– General Douglas MacArthur,
Soldier’s Words from a Soldier’s Heart
Endnotes:
[1] Jesus Christ of Nazareth, The Holy Bible, Gospel Book of John, Chapter 15 Verse 13 (John 15:13), combined English translations from the original Greek, taken from the King James Bible (KJB) & KJ3 Literal Translation Bible (literal word-for-word translation from the Old Testament Hebrew & New Testament Greek, Memorial Edition).