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The minister stuck his shovel in the dirt and mopped at his forehead with a handkerchief. It was cold tonight, but the exertion left him damp with sweat.

He looked up at the stars as he rested. The moon was barely a sliver of white tonight, allowing more of the fainter pinpricks that lit the night sky to shine through.

It would be a new moon in two days, and dark enough that the colors of the stars could be seen if one’s vision was sharp enough and if one allowed one’s eyes to adjust long enough.

“You’ll be shining among those stars,” he told his charge. “A good and faithful servant finally allowed to enter into the joy of his Lord.”

He sighed again, this time with compassion. That’s what this was. Compassion. The news called it murder, but of course, they didn’t know any better. No one who hadn’t served their country in honorable combat could understand what it was like to live on when one’s comrades in arms had died.

It used to make him angry watching those news stories, seeing people crying over the death of a warrior.

It felt selfish to him, as though their pain didn’t matter.

Those warriors had to live through that pain just to make their families happy, their friends happy, or whoever.

It was considered a tragedy when they died, a loss.

Their families would blame God for taking them too soon, as though the Most High had made a mistake in welcoming His lamb back into His fold.

He didn’t get angry anymore. They were loved, and civilians did their best to love them. It was just that civilians couldn’t understand the right way to love warriors.

A lot of the people he counseled complained about that.

They’d come home after a war to find that their wives or husbands didn’t know how to love them the way they needed to be loved.

They’d find that they didn’t love the way their wives or husbands wanted to be loved.

Their friends couldn’t understand why their buddies weren’t happy and carefree, and their employers didn’t have any sympathy for the pain they had to carry and how that would make it hard sometimes to keep their mind on their jobs.

It was a difficult thing to work through.

A lot of people couldn’t do it. Once a person became a warrior, they could never again become a civilian.

The best they could hope to do was live among them, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, never hunting again but forever hunted by their guilt and haunted by their memories.

That was a hard life, but for some warriors it was too hard.

Those warriors had been called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice, and though their bodies lived on, their souls had made that sacrifice.

The minister rescued them from decades of drifting through a life they no longer belonged to and released them to a home where every tear would be wiped away and every pain healed by the loving grace of Jesus Christ.

The minister’s task was to find those who had earned that relief but hadn’t yet found it. Once he found them, he gave them that relief. He sent them home.

He stood, took a deep breath, and released it slowly. It was a beautiful night to send this man home.

He pulled his knife from the scabbard clipped to his belt and cut through the cords binding the tarp wrapped around this warrior.

He could untie the cords and save them for his next warrior, but he liked the symbolism of cutting the cords that bound them to this life and releasing their soul upward to Heaven.

As before, he felt a rush of joy when the bonds fell away. He smiled at the warrior, already resting peacefully, his soul already where it belonged at the foot of his Savior.

He looked up at that beautiful sky and called to Heaven.

"Father, I thank you for accepting already the soul of this brave soldier.

I thank you for taking him to his home in your kingdom where he may sit by the still waters of life and eat of the fruit at your eternal banquet.

I thank you for allowing him to worship at your throne and sing praises to the Most High among his fellow warriors.

I ask, God, that you grant him a special place at your side along with all those who fight to keep this one nation under you free from the ravages of people who have yet to accept your grace.

And I ask that you allow me to continue serving you so that all who suffer needlessly in this life may soon close their eyes to this world and open them with joy in the next.

“Finally, God, if it be your will, I ask that you teach those left behind to understand that those I send to you are not sent in pain to darkness and weeping but sent in love to joy and glory. I know that the blind cannot be expected to see, but I know also that you have healed the eyes of the blind and opened the ears of the deaf. Let them understand, Lord. Let them see what these warriors truly need. Nevertheless, as our Savior said in the garden, not my will, but thine be done. Amen.”

His prayer concluded, the minister carefully lifted the body and carried it to the grave. He said another silent prayer of thanks to God for granting him the strength to perform this task.

He set the body gently into the grave, straightening its legs and folding the arms across its chest.

For the body was an “it” now. The he, the soul, was gone, worshipping at the seat of Christ. Still, it was the body of a warrior, and it deserved to be treated with respect. Only when the minister was satisfied that it rested in proper repose did he begin to fill in the grave.

He wondered if someone would discover this body as they had the first warrior’s body.

He hoped so. Provided they treated it with respect, he didn’t mind people knowing the fate these warriors met.

He wanted people to see how peaceful they were in death.

He wanted people to know that this was compassion.

He tamped the Earth carefully, smoothing it out so that whether allowed to rest or revealed to the world as a sign from God, the warrior received the homage he was due.

It, he reminded himself, not he. He was at the throne of God.

The minister smiled and turned his face to the sky again. “Thank you, God. Thank you, thank you, thank you, God.”

What joy to be able to serve his Heavenly Master this way! What honor to be God’s chosen help to those who would fight to protect the nation God had chosen!

The minister laughed and closed his eyes, reveling in the glory of God and the work he had been called to do.

He didn’t fear being heard as he whooped and laughed and cheered.

He had ensured that no one would interrupt his work.

He had chosen a resting place that befitted a warrior but one that would be free of other people until the work was complete.

Perhaps one day, he would share this work with another. He wasn’t yet old, but age lingered around the next corner. He would need someone strong to help him soon enough and eventually to take over.

But later. For now, this was his sacred duty, and he was overjoyed to be the one entrusted by God to complete it.