Landon Cheben deployed to Afghanistan today!

I just received the pictures of my grandson, Landon Cheben, getting on the bus for Afghanistan today.  Landon is career military, West Pointer, married to my grand daughter, Bailey Dyer Cheben and we all knew that this day would come.  Now it is here and all I can do is go to the map to find Afghanistan and where in the world is it and why in the world are we sending our troops there?  This morning this all became personal!

This is a problem to me as a grandmother.  No one denies the violence is going on daily.  Up to this point I could watch the news of the blue-green attacks and not listen for the name of the soldiers.  For nine months I will be listening and listening hard thinking of my little girl, Boo, at the Fort who is carrying on her life.  I will go by the wall rack in the laundry room and think of the hours that Landon and Bailey worked on that, putting it up for me.  I will not allow myself to escape the television news and I will be more focused on the pain that some family is facing that day and for days to come.

This is a problem to me as a citizen of a country which is beset with debt.  Why are we there in the first place and why are we allowing our young people to face such imminent danger?  :I  read online: "We entered the Afghanistan war as a retaliation for an attack on US soil on 9/11/01.  It was established globally that Bin Laden was behind the attack and that he was being harbored in Afghanistan.  After many attempts to negotiate to turn over Bin Laden to the US, the US formally launched a formal attack on Afghanistan and most precisely, the Taliban."  I will have to decide if I think the war is justified.   I didn't think of my need to think this through until today!

This is a problem to me as a Christian.  Is any war justified?  Jesus said:  "Put your sword back in its place for all who draw the sword die by the sword!  (Matthew 26:52) Or "They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.  Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore."  (Isaiah 2:4)  I need to read more about pacifism and Martin Luther King and the Quakers.  I need to know more about what I think and why I think it!

But right now, I can only think about Landon Cheben stepping on that bus!  I am laying my treasure over there!