Posted November 11, 2026
Operation Green Light for Veterans is a nationwide initiative to show support for veterans and raise awareness regarding resources available to them. This year, the National Association of Counties and the National Association of County Veterans Service Officers have asked the nation’s 3,069 counties, parishes, and boroughs to light their buildings green from November 4 to November 11.
This is entirely appropriate, of course. The United States became a nation by virtue of those who fought and died for our independence. Ours is the longest-standing democracy in the world by virtue of those who have fought and died for our freedoms across the years since. Nearly 1.3 million men and women are active-duty troops today, with 770,118 serving as National Guard or reserves. Each member of our military has taken a solemn oath to support and defend our nation with their lives if necessary.
In response, Americans are honoring our veterans in a variety of ways today:
Our veterans deserve all of this and more. However, I predict that the nationwide attention we’re paying to them on November 11 will dissipate by November 12.
Why is this?
Aristotle considered gratitude to be weakness. In his view, the great person “is the sort of man to confer benefits, but he is ashamed of receiving them; for the one is the mark of a superior, the other of an inferior” (Nicomachean Ethics IV.3).
From his day to ours, Western culture has viewed autonomy and self-sufficiency as virtues. In this mindset, we acknowledge those who serve us as a way of paying our debt to them. Some even view those who serve them as their “employees,” whether of our country or of a restaurant we patronize.
But few jobs come with the potential for sacrifice like that of military service. C. S. Lewis, himself a veteran who was wounded in World War I, wrote:
All that we fear from all the kinds of adversity, severally, is collected together in the life of a soldier on active service. Like sickness, it threatens pain and death. Like poverty, it threatens ill lodging, cold, heat, thirst, and hunger. Like slavery, it threatens toil, humiliation, injustice, and arbitrary rule. Like exile, it separates you from all you love. Like the gallies, it imprisons you at close quarters with uncongenial companions. It threatens every temporal evil—every evil except dishonor and final perdition, and those who bear it like it no better than you would like it.
Even in the best-case scenario—those who serve for only a few years and gain vocational training they use in civilian life—the years they devote to protecting our freedoms can never be regained. Others who devote their careers to military service subject their families to constant change and the fear of losing them in battle. And more than a million families across our history have mourned those who gave “the last full measure of devotion” by dying so we could live.
We cannot give our veterans back the time they sacrificed on our behalf, much less the lives some lost. Nor can we be a nation that truly deserves such sacrifice. While I love our country deeply and would not want to live anywhere else, I readily concede that we are far from perfect.
Accordingly, we owe our veterans a debt we cannot fully pay and are therefore the recipients of grace, defined theologically as unmerited favor. But God can do what we cannot. He can bless, heal, and provide in ways beyond our capacity.
How, then, should we pray with gratitude for our veterans? Let’s use Psalm 46 as our guide today.
Pray for peace in fear. Many serving today are in harm’s way, risking their lives for our freedoms. Ask God to protect them and their families as their “very present help in trouble” (v. 1). And pray for them to make him their “refuge and strength” so that they “will not fear though the earth give way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea” (vv. 1, 2).
Pray for comfort in pain. Like my father, many veterans experienced suffering in war that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. In every circumstance, however, “the Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress” (v. 7). Pray for those who are hurting to seek his healing and for counselors and others who can be his vessels of encouragement and grace.
Pray for war to end and justice to reign. God “makes wars cease to the end of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear” (v. 9). Accordingly, he calls us to “be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!” (v. 10).
Dante Alighieri observed, “In his will is our peace.” Alexander MacLaren was therefore right:
“Peace comes not from the absence of trouble, but from the presence of God.”
How will you pay for such peace for our nation and our military heroes today?
“A great many people are trying to make peace, but that has already been done. God has not left it for us to do; all we have to do is to enter into it.” —Dwight L. Moody
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