Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…
“When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.”
Luke 12: 48b (NLT)“Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them.”
Ephesians 5: 11 (NIV)“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.”
Matthew 5: 14a (ESV)
The container was closed and draped with an American flag when I entered the morgue.
Underneath the flag was a gleaming stainless-steel container approximately 36” long by 15” wide, and about 10” high.
The American flag-draped container had just arrived at Dover Air Force Base, in Dover, Delaware.
Dover AFB was one of our Nation’s three morgue sites during the Vietnam War.
The container had been placed in the center of an elevated concrete slab in the room where the bodies of our servicemen killed in Vietnam were first brought when returned to the United States through Dover AFB.
The container lay motionless, cover closed and draped with the American flag.
Following high school, I had enlisted in the United States Air Force, and after basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, and a year of electronics school at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, I was stationed at Dover Air Force Base working in the Communications and Electronic Maintenance Squadron (CEMS).
CEMS was responsible for testing and repairing the navigational equipment, flight instruments, and radar systems on our aircraft flying back and forth to the war zone in and around Vietnam, and to other locations around our Nation and world.
Aircraft which delivered troops and needed supplies, while also returning our wounded and those who gave their last full measure of devotion for America.
As I began approaching the container, the American flag was removed, folded, and laid to the side, and the cover on the container raised.
I will never forget that moment.
Now open, that small straw-laden space revealed tags identifying the remains of seven of our soldiers and airmen laying in that sacred space. Men who had been killed in the war.
Seven reasons, along with many others throughout our history as a Nation, why I always stand at attention for our National Anthem and other patriotic moments today, and always will.
Memorial Day is always a swirling mixture of tears and emotions of gratitude, heartache, anger, sadness, confusion, and pride—remembered in the lives of those who have stood in the gap for us and our Nation throughout the centuries.
We stand on their shoulders. They raise us up. They gave it all for the freedom and security we enjoy today.
They saved our Nation and the world.
But, as I look around at times, it seems we have forgotten that.
How can it happen that the lives which were sacrificed so that we may sit here today together in freedom—seem so easily forgotten and diminished as the values of America for which they died, are compromised.
Lives forgotten when we who remain do not stand for right, and are not a light shining and exposing the darkness of evil, and lifting lives in need, all around us.
Because, at times it seems that in many venues and arenas—we have forgotten.
When we see the lack of respect or indifference displayed by elected officials, by students and administrators on college campuses, by too many churches, and within educational institutions, and businesses.
And the silence by others to that lack of respect and indifference.
Martin Luther King, Jr. prophetically reminded us that— “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Those who stood in the gap for us and gave everything for this great Nation and our freedom and the security we enjoy today—matter.
It matters that we stand for right and against evil to continue to grow this Nation even more to all that God wants us to be.
I pray we will submit and surrender to God’s call to be all He created each of us to be, and remember the heritage of this great God-ordained Nation, the world we impact for good, and the lives of those sacred patriots—some who gave it all for us.
It matters.
That we return to our values, seeking right, being light to the world everywhere. It matters.
And always, for “Seven Reasons” and so much more—I will stand.
It matters.
In His Name–Scott
Memorial Day. Listen to and watch this video and song “Some Gave All” sung by Billy Ray Cyrus. We will “Never Forget!’’
