Honor Them...
It’s rainy today here in New Glarus. It’s also the day before the last Monday in May, the day we now celebrate Memorial Day.
I wonder if we put too much emphasis on “celebrating” Memorial Day, after all, it is supposed to be a day of remembering the individuals who made the ultimate sacrifice of dying so that our freedom “lives”. Shouldn’t that be a solemn kind of a day, a day when we take the time to thank those who fought for our freedom?
Maybe…and yet, the Memorial Day weekend is also for people to not only reflect on our lost soldiers but to make the trip to the cemetery where their loved ones are buried, where some leave flowers and or flags to honor them. It’s a time when many families come together, maybe the only slice of time they manage to carve out of busy lives of kids, jobs, and who knows what else. It’s a time when friends take the day to spend with each other making new memories they can laugh about years down the road. It’s a time when some choose to do nothing but sit in their favorite recliner with a cold beer in hand living life vicariously through a favorite race car driver.
When you really stop to think about it, isn’t that what our soldiers fought for, the freedom to do what we want, when we want to do it? I’m not so sure they would want us to do anything different.
Please take a moment out of your life tomorrow and say a silent thank you to those soldiers already in heaven and a prayer for those on the battlefield and elsewhere preserving our way of life. Then go and honor them by living the life they fought to preserve…k
May 24, 2015