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)“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”
John 15: 12-13 (ESV)“He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
Isaiah 40: 29-31 (NIV)
I wonder if we simply take it for granted.
Freedom. Security. Safety.
As we get up each new morning, ready to carry out whatever plans we have made for the day. Or get up just to sit at home with loved ones.
Free. Secure. Safe.
And independent. No check points for permission before we begin to do whatever we are planning to do. No directives or restrictions to abide by.
Freedom, security, safety.
Bought at a great price, for you and for me.
In ten days, on Veteran’s Day, our Nation will pause to remember, reflect on, and respect our Veterans.
In May of each year, we also pause as a Nation on Memorial Day to remember, reflect upon, and respect those who gave their lives so that we can sit here today in freedom.
I wonder sometimes, though, if we simply take all they did for us for granted.
In World War II alone, over 16,000,000 US Armed Forces members served. More than 400,000 died, and nearly 700,000 more were wounded.
Many are buried in cemeteries on six continents where WW II raged, with gravesites marked with white Crosses, or Stars of David, with many by necessity unnamed, but carrying the inscription— “Here Rests in Honored Glory—A Comrade in Arms—Known but to God.”
Fighting against the Nazi evil of its “Final Solution” which resulted in the murder by the Nazi’s of over six million of our Jewish family members, and many others.
They paid the price for us.
They saved the world from evil.
And on days like Veteran’s Day, Memorial Day, and may I suggest every day, I wonder if we need to step up and stand in the gap with them and for them, by moving forward together as America—as one Nation under God.
So many of our citizens, and our businesses, educational institutions, and houses of worship will remember, reflect upon, and respect those who stood in the gap for us.
But there will be too many of those who will not.
Martin Luther King, Jr. shared this truth for his day and what he faced, and for us today, when he said—
“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting it is really cooperating with it.”
I wonder where each of us, you and me, and all our institutions, businesses, houses of worship, and others, will stand each day, and every day, as a Nation and for the world, to remember those who sacrificed everything for us.
Assuring our freedom, our security, and our safety.
Remember. Reflect. Respect.
In His Name–Scott
You will be blessed as you watch this powerfully moving video of the American Cemeteries around the world (with the number of American gravesites noted), to the background music of John Williams’ beautiful and inspiring “Hymn to the Fallen.”
