The lyrics of an old gospel song kept running through my mind this week. “Memory is one gift from God that death cannot destroy.” On this weekend when the topics of both death and memory are so prominent in our minds, it seems appropriate that we have such a reminder - first of all that memory is indeed a gift from God, and secondly that while death cannot destroy it, there are other things that can temporarily cause its loss.
The dreaded and dreadful condition we call Alzheimer’s disease robs our loved ones of their most precious memories.
The secularization of our society is an even worse threat to the memories woven into the fabric of our nation because it could be prevented, and yet we as a people allow it to continue year after year.
And then there is neglect, perhaps the most insidious pathway we can take that will lead us as a nation into a time of great memory loss as it pertains to our values and our morals. I use the word “insidious” because it means to proceed in a gradual and subtle way, but with harmful effects.
Neglect will always cause decay or deterioration and eventually death if it is allowed to continue. Neglect your teeth and end up with a need for major dental work. Neglect the warning symptoms of pain and disease in your body and the result will be surgery or even death. Neglect your car and it will no longer be a reliable means of transportation. Neglect your home and you will incur massive repair bills. The gardener who neglects her new plantings will lose not only her harvest, but the hard work she initially put into the project.
The signs of neglect are not seen overnight. It can take days, weeks, even years, for it to become apparent. And at any time during that process it could be stopped and in most cases the damage reversed if the people involved have a mind and the will to do so.
I see us today as a nation of people who, in a corporate sense, have lost our will to return to a time when heritage and legacy, tradition and morals, are treasured and promoted, and have succumbed to the secularization I mentioned earlier, as religion loses social and cultural significance and the desire for pleasure becomes the idol god of our day.
I see that reflected in how we look at Memorial Day and even more in how we observe it. I notice that, with the exception of our younger veterans and their children and grandchildren, there is little interest to be seen in the present day generation to pay honor and respect to those who have gone before. Those of us who place the flowers on the tombstones are getting closer every year to the time when we will be the ones whose bodies will lie beneath the sod.
There are no childish voices asking parents “what is the meaning of these stones?” as Joshua reminded God’s people as he asked them to bring stones from the dry bed of the Jordan River to raise up a memorial to God for His deliverance.
Perhaps in this year of 2017 we need to go back to another time in another cemetery, and meditate on the majestic words spoken by our beloved President Abraham Lincoln at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863.
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
The operative phrase throughout President Lincoln’s address is a reminder that it is up to us to never forget and never let our history be forgotten.
© Joan Rowden Hart
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