A Worthy Sacrifice: Memorial Day

"O Judge of the nations, we remember before you with grateful hearts the men and women of our country who in the day of decision ventured much for the liberties we now enjoy. Grant that we may not rest until all the people of this land share the benefits of true freedom and gladly accept its disciplines. This we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Today is Memorial Day, which is much more than the official beginning of summer and an excuse to grill. It is the day in which we remember those who, in Lincoln’s words, gave the “last full measure of devotion” in the defense of our country and the ideals for which our country stands.

Service of country seems to wax and wane as our wars go. Many young people volunteered for the military after September 11th, 2001. But just a few years later, I overheard two twenty-somethings disparage the idea of volunteering for the military, and being sent off to “dumb” wars just because it would help them pay for college.

Then again, the sight of those college students outside the White House the night that Osama Bin Laden was killed reminded me of my own son when he was 11. Like his parents, he was shocked at the violence that had been inflicted on our nation so close to where he lived. I think that what we saw after Bin Laden’s death was a collective sigh of relief by those who came of age in the “Global War on Terror.”

We honor those who have sacrificed their lives to defend our nation and its freedoms. With the improvements in our medical care, we should also remember those who might have died from their wounds in earlier wars, but who remain scarred. Nor should we forget those who bear scars that no one can see, in their minds, their hearts and their souls.

And then perhaps we should ask ourselves, what have I sacrificed for my fellow Americans and our cherished way of life? It seems to me that very little has been asked of us since that terrible day in 2001. No was drafted for military service. Nor were we were asked to pay for the wars undertaken for our defense. But it’s never too late to make the sacrifices necessary to make good on what has been sacrificed for us.

Earlier I quoted Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Let me finish with another Lincoln quote. At his second inauguration, with the Civil War almost won in 1865, Lincoln asked this of the country: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

That is worth the sacrifice of every American. Let us be worthy of those who have given the last full measure of devotion.