Tuesday, February 10, 2026
Memorial of Saint Scholastica, Virgin
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
1775 … 1776 …1777 …
For God has bound everyone
over to disobedience
so that he may have mercy
on them all. – Paul, Romans 11
Watching PBS and Ken Burns’ The American Revolution last night, Margaret and I saw “Loyalists” and “Patriots” fight each other to the death, joined by Indian tribes who had not seen this kind of brutality, bloodshed and careless death before in the battles between themselves. Europe not only brought the pestilence of smallpox to America but also cruel and unusual warfare that resulted in violence beyond the previous experience of these Native Americans.
Quakers also flocked to the “New World,” and now in Pennsylvania for example, these committed pacifists were spat upon, persecuted and sometimes beaten, even killed because they believed that only God should decide the fate of nations, never only men. They believed that when men attempted this they quickly moved beyond their ken as children of the Fall in Eden. Good and evil defined by fallen men could do no better than set up false fronts and battlefields, both sides riven by desire for revenge and supremacy with little regard for the rights of enemies or equality of peoples, no longer able to revive or even remember Paul’s list of spiritual fruit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control belonged to the victors as spoils of war, not to everyone. And far too often, as did the Roman generals, the winners “made a desert and called it peace.”
How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
My soul yearns and pines
for the courts of the LORD.
My heart and my flesh
cry out for the living God.
How quickly this vision becomes a dream rather than reality. Without perspective and distance from the fray, all the eager participants can see is survival of the fittest. Shed blood becomes an honor, and songs of courage focus on killing rather than mercy. Ms. Howe’s lyric from the Civil War, with its confusion of ideals and victory over an unrighteous foe, wouldn’t be written for 90 years, but the Revolution fed off seeds of “redemptive violence” planted in Eden and fertilized in Europe, now harvested in fledgling thirteen states of America. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage where the Grapes of Wrath are stored. Loose the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on.
How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest
in which she puts her young—
Your altars, O LORD of hosts,
my king and my God!
Paul told the Thessalonians they must be willing to work in order to eat. But how about those fledgling sparrows, could they not also be housed and fed along with the eagles and the ravens and the blue jays and the crows? Do patriots need a bronze star or purple heart to eat? What does it take to be a citizen of a country defined by fallen men, rather than God? When I must choose between power and truth (and they are never quite the same)? When I see scapegoats from whom I am expected to choose, who will be my shield?
How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
Blessed are they who dwell in your house!
continually they praise you.
O God, behold our shield,
and look upon the face of your anointed.
The choice seems simpler when the bullets no longer fly and the smoke clears. Rise up a little in the sudden sweet and lovely air and glimpse the long view, the view of Jeremiah and Jesus and Mary his mother, of Moses and Abraham, of Peter and Stephen, Benedict and Saint Scholastica his sister.
But the choice is not clear at all in the confusion of loyalties and royalties down here on the ground, amidst the conflicting promises of cabbages and kings, in the fog of war blowing through hot and heavy righteous words alongside hot and heavy ten-inch guns, aimed at me.
Today, however, I have the words of David, who in battle made his own deserts but who knew God as shepherd and as king. And for his words, and the words of Asaph and other singers, I am grateful beyond whatever air I breathe today.
How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord, mighty God!
I had rather one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
I had rather lie at the threshold of the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked.
(1 Kings 8, Psalm 84, Psalm 119, Mark 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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