Freedom is not free. That's a good bumper sticker, but it's so much more if you really think about it.
Think for a second about what you did in the past few days. You may have gotten up and went to the kitchen to make yourself a cup of coffee or seven. You may have sent a child to school. You may have gone to work or just worked around the house. You may have taken your Mom shopping. You may just sit around and waste time on facebook (or wastebook) ninety times a day.
If it weren't for the sacrifices of many... you may have had to stand in line to get the coffee and/or the water. You may have not sent the child to a school of YOUR choice. You may have gone to work... but for the state, not for yourself. You may have taken someone shopping... to a store controlled by the government. And I'm sure you wouldn't be free to play with your Iphone/Ipod/IWhatever and goof around on face/wastebook!
SO what I'm saying in my usual long winded way is... stop today and think about the many young men and women who gave their LIVES to our country, where we speak English (well, mostly) rather than German or Japanese... and can do and say as we please when we please. We may worship God (or not) and attend the church of our choice (or not).
Remember that some of these heroes were no more than 18 or 19 years of age when they saw unspeakable things or had unspeakable things happen to them. Just little kids... 18 or 19! Imagine your teen being slaughtered, tortured or burned on Iwo Jima... or the Battle of the Bulge... or in Vietnam... or Afghanistan... Your TEEN, those who are SO protected by their hovering parents. Some parents didn't get to hover - and got nothing more than a telegram and the crisply folded American Flag that covered their son's casket. Those young men and women are who we honor today.
Veteran's Day is for honoring those who served, and those who survived... however.... Memorial Day is for paying our respect to those who gave their LIVES for our country - for the rights we have to vote, pray, or be a complete a-hole. If it's in your persuasion, say a little prayer for those brave men and women who sleep forever under the straight line ranks of stones at Arlington, and every other National Cemetery - and those who lay under foreign soil - and those who were never found. Pray for the families of those brave souls, and those who still live with great loss. Pray for the slain heroes who have NO ONE ELSE to pray for them. Say a prayer for the 55,000 souls on the Wall. Pray for those who have no one left to remember them. All gave some... but some gave ALL.
Dear Lord, please hold the souls of our fallen heroes close to Your Heart, and keep them there forever, AMEN. See, if you read that, you actually prayed. And it probably didn't kill you!!!
