A Veteran’s Prayer

Jim Coppoc.

Like many pastors, I am “bivocational.” I work half time for a small-town church, preaching on Sundays and doing what I can to serve the community during the week, but I also have to hold down a separate full time job to insure my family and make ends meet.

Until a couple months ago, I was the full-time director of a couple social work programs at a community mental health clinic in Marshalltown. It was good work, but exhausting, and I needed a change. So I applied, interviewed, auditioned and was hired to be a full-time musician at the Iowa Veterans Home. I work mostly with memory care residents, helping them reminisce and process their emotions through music. I also direct a choir, and have a couple other projects brewing.

Yesterday, I had some time to kill before choir practice. We meet in the chapel, so I found myself reading through the prayer requests our veterans leave on a table in the back. There were those who prayed for family, for health, even for the staff who help them. One request in particular, though, caught my attention, and has stayed with me from that moment until now: in a shaky, blue script on a piece of paper, someone had written, “I pray for peace.”

I am barely a veteran. I was injured early on, and spent my brief time in the Army working random details at Martin Army Hospital, where I was also treated. In some ways, my new career is my way of making up for the service I couldn’t give before. I also have a son in the National Guard, who will be going on deployment in the all-too-near future, which makes me feel even more connected to the veterans I serve.

As I read the veteran’s prayer in the nursing home chapel, I couldn’t help but wonder who made it. Was it the purple heart World War II veteran, among the last of his kind? The Vietnam door gunner who missed the birth of his child because he was half a world away, watching other fathers’ children die? Or maybe one of the soldiers or sailors or airmen or Marines who never saw combat, but still took the oath, and still have reason to be deeply invested in peace all these years later…

Whoever it was, it is safe to assume he or she is quite a bit farther down the road of life than I am, and has had plenty of time to reflect. Odds are good they also have lived experience that gives them a much deeper perspective on both the value of peace and the efficacy of war.

Whoever they are, I’m sure they didn’t come to this prayer lightly.

Whoever you are, and wherever you are on life’s journey, if you have the time now, that shaky blue handwriting on a random slip of paper is calling out from the veterans home chapel. It is asking you to join the anonymous warrior, and those like them, who pray for peace for these difficult times. Especially in this season of Advent, where Christians around the world recognize and celebrate the potential for peace in the words and actions of Jesus Christ, let us all pray for a good and lasting peace for all humankind-today, tomorrow and forever. Amen.

Jim Coppoc serves Ripley United Church of Christ at 400 S. Main Street in Traer. After a long career in both academia and human services, he has settled into a comfortable existence as a writer, part-time “Bridge Pastor,” and full-time musician in the memory care unit at the Iowa Veterans Home. You can find Jim online at www.facebook.com/jim.at.ripley.