The Christmas Truce at Ypres

On Christmas Eve, 1914, the Western Front was a nightmare of mud, barbed wire, and artillery. British and German soldiers crouched in trenches barely a hundred yards apart near Ypres, Belgium, the earth around them cratered and broken — mountains of soil heaved into the sea of no man's land. The waters of flooded trenches roared with each shell blast.

Then something unthinkable happened. German voices began singing Stille Nacht — "Silent Night." British troops listened, stunned, then answered with carols of their own. By Christmas morning, soldiers from both sides climbed out of their trenches unarmed. They met in the middle, exchanged cigarettes, shared photographs of families back home, and even kicked a football across the frozen ground.

No general ordered the ceasefire. No treaty was signed. For one luminous day, the God who makes wars cease to the ends of the earth broke the bow and shattered the spear — not through military strategy, but through a hymn. The Almighty moved in the hearts of exhausted men and whispered what Psalm 46 declares: "Be still, and know that I am God."

The fighting resumed the next day. The world's chaos returned. But for those who were there, they had glimpsed something nations and kingdoms cannot produce on their own — the peace that comes only when God is within a people, and they will not fall.