Today is Election Day. No, I am not going to tell you who to vote for, but I will encourage you to get out and vote! Even though it's not a presidential election year, there are other important offices to be filled and issues to be decided closer to home. The confluence of Election Day, Veterans Day (November 11) and the 150th anniversary of the Civil War has me thinking. The brave men and women of our defensive forces have made significant sacrifices to preserve for us a free nation, where we enjoy the peaceable and orderly transfer of power in public office. In effect, our veterans have given us the right to vote! If we do not exercise our rights as citizens of the nation for which they fought and died, we spit upon their graves. So get out and vote. Do it for the veterans.

I offer this poem by Herman Melville for your reflection on Veterans Day. The battle of Shiloh in Tennessee took place on April 6-7, 1862. Casualty levels were unprecedented: the 3500 men who died there amounted to more than the United States had lost in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War combined. The soldiers began the day on two different sides, but ended up strewn together on the ground, companions in a common death.

With citizenship in our nation comes the responsibility to vote. With citizenship in Heaven comes the responsibility to pray. Scripture encourages us to pray for the city in which we live, to be subject to lawful authority, and to pray for Christians everywhere. After taking up the full armor of God, "pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints." - Ephesians 6:18 Pray. Vote. Pray!

Shiloh: A Requiem (April, 1862)

BY HERMAN MELVILLE

Skimming lightly, wheeling still,

The swallows fly low

Over the field in clouded days,

The forest-field of Shiloh—

Over the field where April rain

Solaced the parched ones stretched in pain

Through the pause of night

That followed the Sunday fight

Around the church of Shiloh—

The church so lone, the log-built one,

That echoed to many a parting groan

And natural prayer

Of dying foemen mingled there—

Foemen at morn, but friends at eve—

Fame or country least their care:

(What like a bullet can undeceive!)

But now they lie low,

While over them the swallows skim,

And all is hushed at Shiloh.