memorial day

Every culture, society, is built on something. America may be the most unique nation in the world, a nation built upon ideas of freedom and justice for all. But those ideas don’t nor can they stand in a vacuum. The reality is that our nation is built upon the blood and sacrifice of men and women who, since the revolutionary war, gave their lives or their loved ones for those ideas of freedom and justice, ideas built into the fabric of America. For me it is impossible to understand or know the blessings of being an American without understanding and remembering those sacrifices, realizing that this is what an American is, yes one who celebrates freedom, but knows they stand on the lives of those who sacrificed for that freedom. In our Memorial Day celebration today we had a great deal of family with us. We also had our youngest daughter and her two children with us, a daughter who would have loved to have her husband here cooking the bratwurst, sour kraut, and onions he always makes; but he is at camp Victory in Baghdad missing his lovely wife and growing children. We marked his sacrifice and remembered the many others who are and have done the same. The very nature of the Christian faith is sacrifice, Christ’s sacrifice for us and God’s call for us to sacrifice for others. It is as close to holiness as any of us will ever get, meeting Christ at the point of His sacrifice and responding to sacrifice so much for others. Military men and women have been laid to rest in cemeteries around the world having touched that holiness with their own blood. Most of us can’t do much, but we can remember.