The Price They Paid. The Life We Live.

As best as I can determine, this will be the fifty-second Memorial Day our nation has observed since congress passed the Uniform Monday Holiday act in 1968. That legislative act moved and renamed “Decoration Day” that began shortly after the end of the Civil War to the last Monday in May and would be henceforth known as Memorial Day. The purpose of Memorial Day is to honor the men and women who died while serving in the military of the United States of America. There is an irony that is easily overlooked by those of us blessed to be alive to commemorate the day. The very freedom purchased by those men and women that paid with their lives has afforded us so many blessings that if we are not careful we can forget the essence and meaning of Memorial Day. Do not hear what I am not saying. I am not suggesting that we observe Memorial Day in some moribund drudgery because that would actually dishonor the very ones we are attempting to honor. I believe we honor their lives most by living our life to its fullest and certainly we can all agree that those we pause to remember would say to us “it’s when you celebrate freedom and live your life to the fullest that you most honor our death.” What I am trying to remind all of us on this Memorial Day is to0 never allow the abundance of blessings to blind us from the truth that this freedom comes at an incredible price and those that have and are paying it deserve a pause from us to say we bless your memory on this Memorial Day.

This Memorial Day has the potential to be one of the more meaningful for us in recent years and not primairily because of the Covid-19 crisis. As citizens of this great nation, we have a responsibility to protect and to perpetuate the freedoms purchased by those we are called to remember on Memorial Day. This crisis has revealed a much greater sickness that threatens the very soul of our nation and it would be the greatest of insults to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for us to reliquence that freedom because we simply refused to pause to remember that freedom is never free.

One day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. Ronald Reagan

So let’s fire-up the grills, light the bar-b-ques, hook up the RV or put an umbrella in the sand and live a life that honors the memory of those that have laid down their lives so we can live ours free from the terrorist abroad and the tyrannical politician’s at home. And as you load those picnic plates with good food, in a land flowing with milk and honey, let’s take a moment, bow our heads and give thanks to the One that has given us every good and perfect gift in this life and land, our Heavenly Father. And let us say a prayer for the families of the fallen, ask God to grant them a special blessing as they remember their loved ones that didn’t make it home because they were protecting our homes.