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How do wars end? When a war is being fought, all that anyone can think about is when it will be over. In contrast to the wars of previous centuries, where two opposing armies would arrive at a field to fight, in modern wars, so-called ‘non-combatants’ – civilians – are often the main casualties. In that terrible phrase ‘collateral damage’. For a bombed civilian population, an overwhelming longing is all consuming - for the nightly peril and noise to cease, get some sleep and comfort your children. But how do wars end? This question might sound like a “high” subject; by which I mean, a mixture of military theory, political will and tactical assessment. And it can seem either long ago, or far away, or over there. But the fighting and ending of a war is a human endeavour that is much more ordinary than we think. To end a war requires not just exercising compassion for exhausted people but also facing hard truths: that not everyone wants peace. That for some leaders, governments, groups and gangs, war is a choice and its length a matter of their will. It means assessing the balance between justice, deterrent and revenge. Ending a war also requires facing the unanswerable question as the casualty lists grow: did they die in vain? Today we’re between two silences. Yesterday on Remembrance Sunday, in towns and villages across the UK, people of all generations and backgrounds gathered at war memorials to keep silence, to pray and remember. And tomorrow, Armistice Day, at the 11th hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, silence will be kept again. In those silences, in those prayers, we have a chance to see again that it’s human beings who make war. And it’s human beings who can choose at any moment on any day to start to broker peace. The Christian tradition allows that in very limited circumstances, the confrontation of evil acts and unjust rulers can lead to war. But also teaches that whether a truce comes with victory, negotiation or a stalemated mutual exhaustion, the ending of war grows in the earth of ordinary day to day peace making about which every one of us has choices every day. Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn we say. Which reminds us that there are those of us who do have the years. What will we do with the years they did not have? Will we prolong conflict in the pursuit of victory, or chasing revenge, or will we take the first step - in our families, in our communities, in our neighbourhoods and nation - to choose to make and keep peace.