Just some early morning thoughts from me to you…
“I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land…” Ezekiel 22:30 (NIV)
It couldn’t be indifference, could it?
But I can’t help but wonder what it is.
We can never forget.
Yesterday was Veteran’s Day, where we paused to recognize those who stood in the gap for us. So many of our churches took a moment to recognize their service and sacrifice. But I don’t understand how some of our churches still don’t pause to recognize our veterans, or even acknowledge that as a nation we set that day aside to remember, to recognize, to thank them once again.
Certainly, it can’t be indifference, can it? They care, don’t they? Surely they must understand that it might be viewed by some as a snub, not worthy of them, and certainly not worthy of the veterans. Certainly they see that, don’t they?
After all, think about it—as churches we don’t get “to do what we do as a church” openly, and without fear of repercussion, recrimination, or rebuke, if veterans throughout the history of our great nation hadn’t stepped forward to do what they did, and continue to do to this day.
We can never forget.
So many, for so long, have paid the price for all of us, beginning at Bunker Hill and Lexington and Concord and down through Valley Forge. They made the first payment for us. And that payment has been kept up-to-date through the Argonne, Normandy, Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Pusan and Pork Chop Hill, and across a thousand hills in Southeast Asia and the burning sands of the Persian Gulf and Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan.
They paid the price for us.
And on days like yesterday, Veterans Day, and really every day, we need to be reminded of and honor them and that heritage they established and maintained for all of us. Some of them never came back, and others came back on stretchers and on crutches, in wheelchairs, and in boxes, while still others were spit upon and ridiculed.
Heroes forever scarred and crippled, as well as those whose bodies lie beneath row after row after row of white crosses at the hallowed grounds of Arlington National Cemetery, and in thousands of cemeteries across this country and world—heroes who fought and died so that you and I might live and sit here today in freedom.
Patriots who fought, died or were wounded so that you and I might continue to live, laugh, sit and sleep, and, yes, even pray and worship here today and every day in freedom.
They paid the price for us.
We can never forget.
It can’t be indifference on the part of those few. Surely they care and see the sacrifice which was made for them and for us all.
I can’t help but wonder what it is.
I hope we don’t pass on whatever it is to the next generation, or the next—a seeming indifference, or worse, a lack of caring, a lack of respect, and a failure to recognize and acknowledge those who stood in the gap, and still stand in the gap for us, so what we can live in freedom today.
Those who were willing to give it all, if they called to do so, so that we—you and I, our children, grandchildren, Godchildren, friends, neighbors can gather to worship as we choose, without fear. So that we can live in freedom today.
It couldn’t be indifference.
But I can’t help but wonder what it is.
I do know—we can never forget.
In His Name—Scott
