Yesterday I took the Metro over to Arlington National Cemetary.  I hadn’t been there since 2001 and I’m really not sure if anything was different this time, the place is quiet, sad and in its way beautiful.

As soon as you enter the gates, you know you are in a special place; a place like few others.

These are not the kinds of words that we Americans are accustomed to reading on signs, that’s for sure, and yet I didn’t notice anyone who wasn’t observant of them.  As I walked along, there was a tour group with a guide speaking to them in Russian using a quiet tone…

Many people don’t know it, but Arlington has an interesting history to it.  It was established during the Civil War, when Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton ordered thousands of Union dead buried on this site.  He chose the site because it was the home of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and Stanton wanted to make sure that General Lee would never return to his ancestral home overlooking Washington, DC  In his youth, George Washington himself was quite familiar with Arlington House (background above) where Lee would live, since he was distantly related to the Lee family.

These are some of the oldest graves on site, there’s even an old artillery piece…

This isn’t the tomb of the unknown that is so famous, but it is the first such tomb of unknowns as you can see below…

2,111 unknown soldiers placed here in 1866; how very sad war is.  Every where you look in this place makes you wonder why men still refuse to follow God’s ways, and instead insist on finding newer and better ways to kill one another.

Near to the old Lee home is the eternal flame…

…and the final resting place of President Kennedy who as we all know was senselessly gunned down 50 years ago this November.

Why must this be…?

As I was walking through Arlington yesterday, a Senate Committee was voting on a resolution to launch an attack against Syria for its use of chemical weapons…

It occurred to me that a prayer for wisdom for our leaders was in order as they consider these matters, a prayer that God would guide them and that they would set politics aside and do His will…

I thought that it might have been a good thing for those Senators and the President to have come with me to Arlington yesterday…

Everywhere you look, there are rows upon rows of graves, tens of thousands of them, maybe even more, I really don’t know.  I was impressed that there is an area of graves where the grass is not present.  I couldn’t tell if those are new graves, or they are replacing a lawn, but it took my mind back to the time that the first bodies were buried here, 1863 as I recall.  When will men learn?

Yes I know the answer, men won’t learn.  The only thing left to be done is for us to take the Gospel to as many as we can… some will come to Christ as a result; some will be saved.

If this was my state of mind, I can only imagine how grieved God is when He looks down at His children.  As I came within sight of the gate, I heard off to my left, behind the hedge a sudden command being barked out, and then a report of gunfire, and then another.  Finally, the doleful sound of taps being played as another American is laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetary.

May the time come quickly when the will of God is done on earth as it is in Heaven.