The day will come when we no longer sacrifice the greatest wealth
of our nation to right a wrong, or to stop an evil. The only question will be, is it because
there is no evil and all the wrongs have been righted, or is it because we are
no longer?
Our land existed before man, and it will exist after
mankind has disappeared. It is dirt and
rock, streams, rivers and lakes, it is trees and grasses, mountains and
valleys, but our nation is much more than a fortunate circumstance on a great
land. It is an idea that became an
ideal, it is a promise realized, an opportunity taken. We have strength, for those who are weak, we have
will, for those who seek change, we have hope for those who are without hope,
but we are fragile. Each day we decide
if we continue or we end, each day we seek to be united or we chose to support tyranny. In the pursuit of power there are those who
would divide us with their deeds, who choose to condemn us with their actions,
who tolerate no dissent from their position.
They are like a cancer to our freedom.
What they say is undermined by what they do.
This Memorial Day, like every Memorial Day since its
creation, is a time to reflect on the price we have paid to keep these united
states together. We have sent generation
after generation of our young men and women as payment for an ideal. We are not a perfect nation. Nothing created by man can ever be, but we
have raised our young, tried to teach them about freedom, and hoped to inspire
them to greatness beyond what we could imagine.
Now in our 16th year of a war with no end in sight we seem to
be on the precipice of some great decision.
But, we have almost reached a point of stasis, where the loss of our
young is acceptable and we become immune to the cost to our humanity.
Please don’t let that happen.
Don’t let their sacrifice to keep this nation as “one nation indivisible”
be in vain. If you are so inclined, pray
for them for they know the end of war, but also pray for us, because we don’t.
1 comment:
I struggle these days with a day like Memorial Day. I am no longer able to lay hold of the easy patriotism that I once knew, but I am unwilling to grab the cynicism that I see in some of those who share many of my beliefs. I'm not willing to say that America always fights "to defend freedom" nor am I even willing to say that we are free. But there is something unseemly in despising soldiers and sailors, airmen and marines who have died in military service. The sacrifice is real even if the motives of our political class or our nation are not pure.
I had the opportunity to speak at the Memorial Day service in my small town and I was hoping I could strike a balance between speaking with personal integrity and paying real honor to those who have died in military service. I was a little worried. Thankfully the reaction was positive.
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