This weekend our nation is called to remember the ultimate sacrifices made by so many men and women who have fought for our freedom over the years of our history.
We are called to remember all those who went before us, the men who fought the Revolutionary War and those who died while walking through the snows of Valley Forge.
We are called to remember those whose lives were lost during the War of 1812 when Frances Scott Key wrote his poem while watching the British bombardment of Fort McHenry..... how the “star-spangled banner” continued to wave as he watched it through the “rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air”, giving “proof through the night that our flag was still there.”
We are called to remember those who fought and left their blood on the soil of foreign lands in World Wars I and II, in Korea and Viet Nam, and in the Middle East and continue to do so today.
We are called to remember other sacrifices made by those who did not pay the ultimate price but who suffered untold hardship so that we could be free today.
We are called to remember the great thinkers and crafters of words as they struggled to write our historic documents of revolution and freedom, those who suffered through the long hot days of the summer months on the second floor of Independence Hall where both the Declaration and the subsequent U.S. Constitution were debated and adopted.
History tells us that the debate often became more heated than the uncooled air in that room until Benjamin Franklin called for daily prayers for guidance “from the Almighty”, and their prayers were answered as these great Statesmen came together in one mind to give us some of the greatest national documents ever written.
We are called to remember and we are called to teach our children because “Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.” (Elie Wiesel)
Do our children and grandchildren fully understand how and why our nation became free? We are called to teach them from year to year, to make each Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day and Independence Day a time of “teachable moments” for them.
Each moment of every day is a memory in the making for our children and grand children. They are the ones who will continue to remember long after we are gone, but only if we teach them the importance of remembering.
“Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.” (Charles Swindoll)
If we pack the events of Memorial Day into a box with the date of the last Monday in May of each year, and wrap it up with BBQ’s and picnics and parades and tie it with a big bow of the stars and stripes, we do not do it justice.
When the visible and tangible is gone, and only the invisible and intangible remain, it all becomes so much more precious because we hold on to the intangible only through our memories.
Gospel song lyricist Steve Green wrote: "After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone and our children sift through all we’ve left behind, may the clues that they discover, and the memories they uncover become the light that leads them to the road we all must find. May all who come behind us find us faithful. May the fire of our devotion light their way. May the footprints that we leave lead them to believe and the lives we live inspire them to obey.”
Joan Rowden Hart © 2018
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