In Straight Paths
Page 19
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Author's Comment: 1 am sure that some of my readers may have been conscientious objectors in war times, and I leave that with the individual and God. But one thing all of us need to appreciate about Sergeant York is the fact that he settled the issue of going to war on a mountainside in Tennessee, where he spent two days and a night with God until Peace "Like the waters of the lake when the Master said, 'Peace, be still'" calmed his soul and gave him the assurance that God was going to see him through.
Personally, I feel I owe a debt to those who have fought for our country to help preserve our freedom. As Sergeant York said in an address at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, "There are those who ask me and other veterans of World War I, 'What did it ever get you?' Let me answer them now. It got me twenty-three years (his age at the time of the address) of living in America where a humble citizen can stand on the same platform with the president of the United States.
"The thing they forget is that liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win once and stop. Liberty, freedom, and democracy are prizes awarded to people who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them."
Isn't this like our Christian Warfare? It will be a fight to the finish, therefore, we must, "Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand ... ," for our fight is "against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places." And just as Sergeant York was a good soldier of the U.S. Army, so we are told in II Timothy 2:3 to be a "good soldier of Jesus Christ," not to be entangled with the affairs of this life, verse 4, that we may please him who hath chosen us to be a soldier. Amen!
We Give Best Under the Weight of the Cross
Joshua Stauffer, in an article published in the Convention Herald in May of 1972, told the following story.