As a young boy, Memorial Day was a huge holiday. Being born a few years after World War II and during the Korean War, every family in our neighborhood had been impacted by the two wars. Most of my friends who had stepfathers or moms who were single were not because of divorce but because their moms were widows. The highlight of Memorial Day were huge parades where I often marched as a cub or boy scout along with every other organization who had a uniform or a marching band. It was a grand occasion that meant something dear.
We have lost much of the meaning of Memorial Day in our culture today but it still offers an opportunity to teach our children. Remembering the ultimate sacrifice for others comes in several ways:
1. The sacrifice that men and women of our country have made to defend our liberty as a nation and freedoms under our constitutional form of government. As a veteran this means something special to me and I will not let my grandchildren forget those who fought and died not just for our country, but did so for other countries against tyranny.
2. Remembering those who gave their lives for the faith. We often think of martyrs as something from the past, but give thought to the following statistics and how martyrdom is very much of our modern world even today; (The term martyr here applies to a range of faith, not just orthodox Christian)
Since AD 33, about the time of the birth of the New Testament church, 69,420,000 have been martyred for their faith.
24,020,00 of them were between the years 33-1900.
45,400,000 of them were between 1900-2000
13,300,000 of them were between 1950-2000
Currently there are about 50 countries in the world that still are persecuting Christians for their faith where they are dying for the cause of the gospel.
Don’t forget them this Memorial Day.
3. The greatest sacrifice and the one that truly was sacrifice was of course, Jesus Christ. Mark 10:45 states, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” Jesus came for one reason and that was to be a sacrifice for rebels like you and me and to satisfy the divine wrath of God and secure us by redeeming us with His blood.
This Memorial weekend, give thanks for the men and women who gave their lives for liberty in our country, for the ones who loved Christ to the point of their own death, and most of all for Jesus Christ, who purchased us to everlasting life through His sacrifice.
1 comments:
May our Lord who sees all and whose lovingkindness is everlasting, grant peace and comfort to your hearts at this time!
Post a Comment