Editor:
In my previous letter, I expressed my gratitude to this paper for honoring our law enforcement officers, and now I wish to express my gratitude for the honor shown to firefighters. I’m not sure which group more often risks and limb for the people they serve, and I’m not sure if it matters.
I, personally, am glad there are those who want to fight crime, and there are those who want to fight fires. I’m not about to say one person is better than another. But then, I’m a Christian and believe that all people are same in God’s eye.
If I were president, I probably wouldn’t show more respect for the Pope than I would for, say, Billy Graham. But then, I don’t have much respect for the church. The institutional church that is. There are two Christians I would praise, however, one being my grandmother Katie Thomson, and the other my Aunt Mahala Hildebrand. There are others I revere, but these two stand out the most.
There are others in the community I wish to thank for their services. One group is those of the highway department who get out when the roads are covered with ice and clear them, and the other group is those who get out when there’s a storm to restore electrical power.
I think we Americans have become too angry about too many things, too often things that are trivial, and other things that maybe we could work out if we tried.
It’s been said that hatred toward the Jews is because they crucified the Lord. I don’t see how. To be guilty, they would have to be nearly 2,000 years old.
Are the Germans guilty of the Holocaust? I think the guilty generation has about come and gone. Are the Japanese guilty of Pearl Harbor? I think that generation has pretty much disappeared, too.
What about Europeans who came to this country and took it away from American Indians? They, too, have come and gone.
I believe as Apostle Paul: “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3). And what I best remember Jesus for was his prayer from the cross when he prayed for those who had him crucified: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Eddie L. Vaughn
Lebanon
