Liberty”As we turn the calendar’s pages to yet another Memorial Day, I feel compelled to issue a … challenge, one I offer not as a clergyman but as an American. Simply, let’s not lose focus about what this most solemn of national holidays should really be about. Too often Americans view the Memorial Day holiday as a pleasant three-day weekend kicking off the summer, perhaps with the year’s first trip to the beach or the lake. We are inclined to think of the Fourth of July as the highlight of the season, with parades and fireworks to renew our nation’s dedication to the principles of liberty. But it’s worth remembering that we are able to celebrate Independence Day only because of the sacrifices made by the men and women whose lives were cut short to advance those principles. Memorial Day is for honoring their supreme sacrifice. But what does that mean? It is not enough simply to bow our heads and note that more than a million men and women have given their lives so that we may be free. That reduces their sacrifice to mere statistics. The challenge for the living is to keep in mind what each of those individual sacrifices represented. Each soldier, sailor, airman, or marine who died in battle left behind loved ones who mourned their deeply personal loss. They were fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, childhood friends, relatives, neighbors, and members of the community. In giving their lives, they left unfulfilled dreams and ambitions to add to their loved ones’ sorrows. That’s a million instances of tremendous personal anguish. … Nothing underscores the importance of liberty as much as the price paid for it. How else to explain the paradox that the price for freedom was so often paid for by those who willingly gave up their own? That sacrifice testifies to the extraordinary power of the ideal of freedom.” –author and pastor Rev. Richard G. Lee
via Brief for Monday, May 30, 2011 – Editions – PatriotPost.US.