Memorial Day Sale 3/24/2008
The big weekend is upon us. Three days of special events and sales that get us to the backyard, beach or boutique. It’s Memorial Day! The day we are supposed to remember those who gave their lives for our freedoms, and those who continue to do so.
There are some solemn occasions, memorial services, flags in the cemeteries, moments of silence. But all of these are interludes to the primary tasks of enjoying a brief respite from work and saving money at the mall. It is often said that we have too much fun at the expense of those who paid so high a price for our freedoms.
Yet the ability to go out and pursue happiness is precisely why so many of us were willing to go in harm’s way. The pursuit of happiness was specifically written into our Declaration of Independence as an inalienable right, alongside life and liberty. To be sure, every nation or movement that we have ever fought has desired to restrict our happiness to further their own. Yet none of them seemed to know what true happiness was.
Our primary enemies today don’t want us to play music, go to plays, dress or groom so that we can talk face-to-face, allow girls to go to school, worship freely or even fly kites. Since they are perfectly content to live in perpetual anger, they can go fly a kite! We still have people that will risk all and give all, so that you can enjoy a weekend like this. You owe it to them to pursue happiness and to enjoy life. Just don’t take it for granted.
People who do, have their own Memorial Day Sale. They sell short the actual price for their weekend away. They measure it at the pump instead of in the cemeteries and veterans’hospitals. They complain of traffic jams without a thought for those who put their entire lives on hold so that we can drive where we want without permission from the government. Those who made this and every day of freedom, would gladly have shared your happiness today. But there was no discount on the cost of it and they paid full price.
Not all of them knew Christ, but Christ knew all of them. Christ would find in them a kindred spirit of sacrifice for others; a willingness to do whatever it took to redeem someone else; a desire to set at liberty those who were oppressed. They were not all angels, but they were on the same side. Whether or not one accepts the technique, the ability to openly accept it or not came from those who “…laid down their life for a another.”
Rev. Dennis P. Levin