Today is Memorial Day and days like this always come with mixed feelings for me, as well as for many others. We are grateful for the service and sacrifice of our veterans, yet we do not want to celebrate the spirit of nationalism and violence. I am aware of the theological complexity that comes with remembering our country’s wars and warriors. I am also aware of the pastoral complexity. My focus has moved from moral statements about war and peace to queries like “how do we create space for veterans to share their stories in a way that nurtures healing and community?”

At my home meeting, we experienced a deeply powerful and tender moment when a Vietnam veteran was given space to share his story. He felt led to share his story as a public confession and from broken hearts we supported him with forgiveness and prayers. His courage to share and our courage to receive gave birth to a deeper understanding of what it means to practice the ministry of reconciliation. I remember him sharing frustration with past churches that were eager to ask veterans to stand as heroes and glorify the military but unwilling to host the complexity and even darkness of their experience. He felt free to share in our meeting because of our open dialogue about peace and reconciliation.

Last Sunday, however, nothing was said about Memorial Day…or perhaps there was something said. The message was brought by Elizabeth Todd, a Friend serving abroad in Ramallah. She was not a dynamic speaker but I was impacted by her words because they seemed to flow from a center of experience and prayer. One thing she focused on was the temptation to respond to the Middle East tensions with either fatalism or favoritism. Yet being the Friends of Jesus calls us to move beyond those responses and be obedient to the movements of Truth and Peace. She shared something a friend said to her and the words reached into my soul: “If you have a heart for Palestine and not for Israel, you don’t have the heart of God. If you have a heart for Israel and not for Palestine, you don’t have the heart of God.”

Could we say the same things for the conflicts that we face as individuals, communities, and as a nation? Do we have a heart for our family, race, class, or country and not for the other? Are we so frustrated by our own family, race, class, or country that we no longer have God’s heart for them as well? God’s heart is so much wider and deeper than ours, taking in all our friends and enemies. This memorial day, I remember the men and women who lost their lives in service to my country. And I also pray for those who were/are on the other side of those conflicts- image-bearers of God, children of mothers and fathers, human beings with stories of sin and goodness and pain, and objects of God’s loving kindness. With fear and trembling, I pray that I can have more of God’s heart, the heart that eternally remembers the life and death of each one of God’s children and gives the sun to shine on the just and the unjust. If we could each have a piece of this Infinite Tenderness and Burden, maybe then we could see the possibilities of peace.