This month is a time for remembering.
For some of the youngest among us, it is a time for remembering everything you studied this year as you take the various final exams which punctuate the final days of the school year. For some of our kids, it is a time for looking ahead to summer fun, and for those graduating from high school, it presents a moment of decision. It’s also a time to remember the teachers who have dedicated their lives helping to train up our children.
For the parents among us, it is a time for you to reflect on your graduate’s progress over the course of the last eighteen years. We look at the pictures of what was and remember the moments when they took their first step, said their first word, started their first day of school, went on their first date, won their first game and everything else which led up to this day, and it is the beginning of letting them go too.
For all of us, it is a time to remember mom. Some of us will remember her with a tear – our memories of her being all that we have left to hold. Some may not be remembered so fondly, those memories riddled with grief and hurt. If you are extremely fortunate, your mom is still near, perhaps next door, or down the street, across town, state and further. But you can hear her voice. You can talk to her. She can dote on you, and you can celebrate the treasure she has been to you all these days and years. Call her! Write her! Visit her! Love on her! She, like every one of us, is only here for a little while.
There is one more thing that we must remember in May; it is the cost of freedom. In my day, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young wrote that the cost of freedom was buried in the ground. The payment for freedom is commemorated by countless white stone markers in places like Arlington, Washington DC, and on the ground of Normandy. It is marked by a myriad of names on monuments to those who paid the ultimate price for freedom in the conflicts including The Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the American Civil War, WW I, WW II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan – memorials to men and women both known by name and others still unknown to this day.
Several years ago, at a Memorial Day service at Arlington, while laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, General Dunsford (the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) speaking to the crowd there implied by his comments, that rather than remembering how these men and women died, we should remember how they lived. He said:
“It is how these men and women lived that is important. It is how they lived that makes us remember them. In life, these individuals chose to be something bigger than themselves. They chose to accept hardship and great personal risk. They were people who truly embodied the most important values and traditions of our nation.”
I was thinking of that vast sea of grave markers which surrounds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, each of them with a name and a symbol of their personal faith or life. Their names are common everyday names like Jack, Frank, Joe, Pete, Tim, Mike, Mary, Liz, Ralph, but they were not common men and women. Some of them were farmers and farmers sons, cowboys, businessmen, young men straight out of high school, wives, and daughters; some enlisted, many drafted. All of them mattered to someone and ultimately because of what they did all of them matter to the nation.
These uncommon men and women, like those who survived them through our nation’s various wars and conflicts exhibited uncommon valor, uncommon patriotism, and uncommon bravery as they faced a common enemy. From every walk of life they came, united in purpose and willing up front to lay it all down.
As a minister of the gospel, I remember one particular warrior whose blood paid a price that most are not willing, and which none of us can pay, for the freedom of our souls. When we look upon His cross, we think not only about the way He died but about the way He lived, the truths He taught, and the purpose for His coming. Even more, we remember that the grave DID NOT have the last word, but Jesus rose again ALIVE and will one day, as promised, return for those who have trusted in Him.
This month, we remember by honoring our children’s accomplishments, our mother’s sacrifice and love, the heroism of those who paid the ultimate price for our nation, and the unwavering labor and sacrifice of Jesus Christ to save sinners.
We have a lot to remember.
Never forget.
We will talk again soon!
Brother Rich
