This is what defeat looks like. Victory has a cost, and it is not to ever be discounted. A society that does not recall and honour those who died for their King and Country is a society that is doomed: and when such rituals are held only by the military and crossfit the writing is on the wall.
Locally, we have usch memorials. There is a remnant who still believe. But defeat looks like this. Our enemy is within our churches and our communities: let not them conquer.
For defeat is ashes and tears and loss, without memorial.
How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow has she become, she who was great among the nations! She who was a princess among the provinces has become a slave.
She weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks; among all her lovers she has none to comfort her; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her; they have become her enemies.
Judah has gone into exile because of affliction and hard servitude; she dwells now among the nations, but finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress.
The roads to Zion mourn, for none come to the festival; all her gates are desolate; her priests groan; her virgins have been afflicted, and she herself suffers bitterly.
Her foes have become the head; her enemies prosper, because the LORD has afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions; her children have gone away, captives before the foe.
Judah is considered to be a broken woman. Her husband is defeated: her lovers have abandoned her. Her friends have betrayed her. She has been broken open — probably literally — and is now enslaved, in service to masters who care not a whit for her. There is no state to provide comfort from cradle to grave.
She is eating the fruits of her life, and it feels like ashes.
The enemy has stretched out his hands over all her precious things; for she has seen the nations enter her sanctuary, those whom you forbade to enter your congregation.
All her people groan as they search for bread; they trade their treasures for food to revive their strength. “Look, O LORD, and see, for I am despised.”
“Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger.
The petunias think they are winning. They are blind. They do not see that they are the Quislings of this age, enabling the external threats of this religious war to triumph. THey do not understand that if the Islamists triumph their multicoloured hair will not save them: if they are lucky they will be up against the wall: if they are unlucky their fate will be that of the Assyrian Christians.
Unlike the Jerusalem of this life, which has been conquered, destroyed, restored and remains the Jerusalem to come will be made by God and preserved by God for the resurrection. Christ will preserve his church.
Despite us, at times.
Our job is to be faithful to the Gospel.
But be aware that enemies exist. Let us pray for them. And give them no quarter.
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