Put a Bow on It

February 21, 2021; The First Sunday of Lent: Genesis 9:8–17

Put a bow on it.

That’s a phrase with a few different implications, depending on how we use it. It makes me think of the first US war I remember, the Gulf War. And there were these yellow ribbons and bows that had started popping up all around the neighborhood, on mailboxes and draped around tree trunks and slapped on bumper stickers. You probably know the phrase that accompanied it: Support the Troops.

As a kid, the yellow ribbons and bows were as unfamiliar as going to war at all. But we saw them again as the war in Afghanistan and the second Iraq war had begun. If you only grew during this period of US military history, you’d assume that putting a yellow bow on a tree was just something we did, had always done. The context of this bow though, is more complex. It is born out of the chaos and tumult of the Vietnam War, and how in the protests to the war, many troops were poorly received upon returning home. When the hostage crisis unfolded a few years later, a yellow ribbon campaign was started in support of the hostages, and as the Gulf War happened a decade later, the yellow bows and ribbons were transformed into a sign of solidarity and support for the troops, in stark contrast to the mixed reception of the 70s.

It lends an important context for us. Now, we see yellow bows, ribbons, and we know what that means. And as complicated as war is for those who follow the Way of Jesus, we still know that our military personnel are the ones grappling…