Gettysburg

I returned Friday from a week at Gettysburg with my Girl Scout troop. We camped in the National Park and hiked and learned about the Civil War. One of my co-workers is a re-enactor and he offered to take us on a tour of the battlegrounds. Fascinating. The girls learned a lot from it. We did both the Girl Scout badge and the Boy Scout badge. It made for a well rounded examination of the subject. The Boy Scouts deal with the military aspects and the Girl Scouts deal with what the women had to go through to hold their families and homes together during a war.
Monday night at our usual meeting, we took a side-trip to our local cemetery and discovered several Civil War veterans who were buried there, including one who died in the battle of Vicksburg and another who died in a prisoner of war camp. We held our Scouts Own there.
For those unfamiliar with a Scouts Own, it is a quiet reflection on a single subject or theme. Poems, songs, thoughts etc are shared. The girls chose the Gettysburg Address as their theme. One girl read the Address out loud. Another had us listen to a song from her laptop that to her discribed how the women must have felt while their husbands, brothers, uncles and other males fought a bitter war. Still another wrote a poem in which she describes looking up during the battle and seeing her second cousin in the enemy line. It was very moving.
But the part I liked the best was back at the house over snack, when one Scout asked, "Don't we ever learn about how to prevent wars? Why do we keep having them?" Maybe her question will cause her to search for answers that will help all of us to strive for peace.
Please, Lord?