THANKFUL

Chatting with Jesus

Monday, May 29, 2023, Memorial Day

Lord Jesus, you teach your followers, “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” (John 15:13 NLT). You proved that love on Calvary’s cross, and laid down your life to free us from sin.

On this sacred day, we honor those who made their ultimate sacrifice so we may live in our God-given rights of freedom. The 200,000 resting in Arlington National Cemetery remind us of this profound truth: “freedom isn’t free.” Freedom always comes with a cost. Thankfully, throughout history faithful men and women have stepped forward to take that risk. General George S. Patton spoke such a truth: “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God such men lived.”

Perhaps no one honored our fallen heroes more eloquently than Abraham Lincoln, on that cold November day, 1863, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Lord, two-thousand years after Calvary’s sacrifice, your life’s blood still redeems us. You laid down your life for your ‘friends.’ And we praise you that brave men and women laid down their lives for their friends. Bless all our dear Gold Star families and the sacrifices they too made.

May we live worthy of your death that redeemed us from our sins. And may we live worthy of the sacrifice of those whose shed blood bought our God-given freedoms here at home. Let us prove their deaths were not in vain.  

 Amen, Jesus.