The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month will fall on Sunday this year, at a time when many of us are seated in pews listening to an opening hymn or quieting a restless child.
Around the world others will be doing far more dangerous things, like ferreting out bombmakers and Taliban holdovers in Afghanistan. For them, the moment in time America sets aside to remember veterans will be just that, another moment in time they must survive.
They are the future veterans on this Veterans Day, and we pray that each of them will be with us soon to thank them in person for their service. But, we know there is a good chance that some of them won't be.
That's the nature of war.
And it's ironic in a way that Veterans Day began as Armistice Day, the day when Germany signed the document to end World War I - "The Great War," "The War To End All Wars."
If only had that been true.
Since that time America has sent millions of men and women into wars that have spanned the globe and cost hundreds of thousands of those men and women their lives.
One can argue long and hard over the justification of those individual conflicts, but not over the individual sacrifice of those soldiers.
On Sunday, we will be paying tribute to those who have gone before and those who are still with us who set aside their lives to protect ours.