It’s easy to get sentimental, but really, what good does it do? Gratitude today means more than sentiment, and honor, I believe, is an even more fitting response to our fallen than gratitude.
Today we are, or should be, taking time to consider men and women who’ve died in service. I know we’re divided over the legitimacy of some recent wars, but questioning the rationale for Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan should never negate the honor nor minimize the sacrifice of the people who died fighting there.
The ugly truth is often the simple truth as well, and the simple truth is some people will always want more power, whether to occupy, plunder, or otherwise control other nations. So they’ll mount aggressions, and their targets will act in defense of the freedoms their country will lose if they don’t. Battles will start, and women and men will die in the process. When they do, some regular and significant response is called for.
Sentiment is the easiest, and I fall into that one myself just watching some of the films making the rounds on television during Memorial Day weekend. Glory is one of my favorites, never failing to yank the tears out of me. A close second is Saving Private Ryan, then The Best Years of our Lives (fantastic) and I’m still a sucker for the zany No Time for Sergeants.
But like I said, what’s the point? Sentiment is an emotional luxury which feels good and that’s about it.
Gratitude has more muscle to it, and should play a big role in our thoughts and feelings today. What I now have as a free man was not just given me. It was fought and died for, the soldiers we honor never reaping the benefits I enjoy without spilling a drop of my own blood.
Most of them were young, underscoring the horribleness of war. They didn’t just give up the lives they had; they gave up the lives they could have had. There are children who would have been born, homes that could have thrived, careers that never materialized, and families who wouldn’t be weeping today if loved ones hadn’t paid the highest price.
Our gratitude does nothing directly for them, but it’s still called for, because decent people recognize and emotionally respond to sacrifices made for them.
But the best response to Memorial Day is honor, and honor is nicely shown in words, better shown through actions.
If someone died defending my freedoms, I best honor that person by taking full advantage of those freedoms, and protecting them fiercely when they’re threatened. Nothing, to my thinking, shows more honor to our fallen than an ongoing, practical, and passionate defense of the liberties they stood for, then
fell for.
Free speech, freedom of religion, free trade, freedom of conscience, and freedom to protect my family as needed, are all hills worth defending to the death. I see real threats to all of them today, some more endangered than others, but all worth whatever can be mustered to preserve them.
That’s why Memorial Day is hardly a time to smugly say “Nice work, we’ve arrived.” Better to say, “A baton was passed every time a soldier fell, with the message Take it and continue attached. So we will. We will stay informed, analyze the information we get, then speak, vote, and fight accordingly.”
I never fought a declared battle, never even served in the military. But I am not too old nor too lazy to step up to whatever battles God allows me to face, whether personal, domestic, natural or spiritual. There’s honor in fighting when fighting is called for, and that’s an honor we surely owe the ones who took it as far as they could, then said, and are still saying, “Your turn.”
So Happy Memorial Day and, I hope, Honorable Memorial Day as well.
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