“… My people have forgotten Me days without number.”

— Jeremiah 2:32

Do you know anyone—a relative, a friend, a hometown hero—who has given his or her life for our country? Memorial Day is a day when we remember those who have made that ultimate sacrifice, who have given their lives that we might enjoy the freedom we have in America today. How easily we forget the terror that filled the hearts of young men when they landed on the beaches of strange islands they had never heard of. How easily we forget the spilled blood of those who lay wounded in foxholes. We forget all those sacrifices in the midst of our modern pleasures and preoccupations.

But today we remember, and well we should. Let us remember Lexington, Concord, Valley Forge, Yorktown, the Battle of New Orleans, Gettysburg, Pearl Harbor, Bataan, Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, North Africa, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Pork Chop Hill, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf, where hundreds of thousands of Americans laid down their lives that we might enjoy this day of peace and freedom.

As we remember those brave men and women, we also need to remember what they fought for. Did they sacrifice their lives for what we see happening in our nation these days, for our plummeting moral standards? Never in the history of the world, one writer has said, has any nation so quickly thrown off its belief system. For scores of years founders, presidents, and Supreme Court justices have said, “This is a Christian nation.” But we have forgotten or rejected our heritage by the choices so many of us have made.

Is there anything you can do today to remember not only the men and women who have given their lives for this country but also why they gave up their lives? Is there something you can do today—within yourself or with those around you—to help our nation get back on course? May God grant that we return to our roots and remember our rich Christian heritage and those who shed their own blood to preserve it.

“… the Almighty Being … has kept us in His hands from
the infancy of our Republic to the present day …”
Andrew Jackson