“I heard the bells on Christmas day,

Their old familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet the words repeat

Of peace on earth, good will to men.”

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

There’s something haunting about those words — written in a time when the world had grown weary of bloodshed. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow penned them amid the horrors of the American Civil War, when the land itself seemed to echo with grief and longing. His words, born from heartbreak, remind us that even in the darkest moments, hope must never die — and peace must never be forgotten.

Today, our battlefields may not be lined with soldiers, but they are no less real. The war has shifted — from muskets to microphones, from bayonets to broadcasts. Division has become our new civil conflict. Every headline screams of outrage, every debate turns to venom, and every difference of opinion seems to demand an enemy.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my great concern is to be on God’s side.” His words pierce through time because they confront a truth we’ve lost sight of — that righteousness isn’t measured by our political affiliations or opinions, but by our alignment with truth, humility, and grace.

Even General Robert E. Lee, a man forever marked by war, recognized the poison of division. He said, “What a cruel thing war is… to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors.” And later, in his quiet wisdom, he urged, “I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war; follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife.”

Those words should make us pause. Because once again, our nation stands wounded — not by musket fire, but by bitterness. The sores of our divisions have been reopened by those who profit from our discord, who whisper hatred into the ears of the young and the old alike.

I have watched this happen — since my earliest years, growing up surrounded by politics and policy, watching peace slowly erode like stone under relentless rain. I’ve seen the manipulators — those who twist causes, movements, and noble intentions into weapons of control. From the Cold War’s uneasy peace to the fiery rhetoric of the present day, we’ve allowed the soul of America to be chipped away by factions who care more about power than people.

And yet, I still believe.

I believe that we can choose grace over grievance. That we can remember how to speak without shouting, how to disagree without despising. We must reclaim the art of understanding — the humility to say, “We may not agree, but I still value you as my neighbor, my brother, my sister.”

Because that’s where peace begins — not in the halls of government, but around our tables, in our churches, in the quiet decisions we make every day to love instead of hate.

So let us not reopen the sores of our nation’s past. Let us be healers. Let us be those who, in Longfellow’s words, still hear the bells — ringing wild and sweet, proclaiming “peace on earth, good will to men.”

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