On this Memorial Day, please, do not thank a living veteran. Save those daily thanks for VETERANS DAY for those who are still alive and have either served or are currently serving in our Armed Forces. Memorial Day is a day to honor all those who have given their ALL in the defense of and preservation of our Union.
For those that have given their ALL, their very lives for our Nation, we must realize what was lost. What would have been. What could have been. Lines of heritage were not just altered, but in many cases were totally eliminated. Beginning with our Nation’s earlier wars, human flesh became the feast of the mechanisms of war. The ingenuity and depravity of man became the consumer of lives, where metal casings of tanks, bombs and bullets ripped through human flesh, like fingers through wet toilet paper. Poisonous gas like phosgene, chlorine, and mustard gas were indiscriminate, moving with the air causing paralysis followed by “a lingering and agonizing death”. (history.com; updated May 10, 2024; Dave Roos.) The brutality of the nature of war left not only human scars, but lost opportunities, hopes and dreams in graveyards and mausoleums.
It seems to be the nature of Americans to forget tragic events, as we are encouraged to move forward and forget. We are told that living a life in sorrow can create depression and can waste away a productive life. While true to a limited degree, it is often those experiences that forge the path forward. To forget what has happened before is an invitation to repeat the horror of the past. By failing to remember the human impact of the horrors of war, we have in a way desensitized ourselves to its lingering effects. Only those who have lost a part of their heritage through the violence of war can truly carry with them the scars left behind forever and can speak of the dangers of kinetic conflict forgotten by too many.
How many times in the last year have you viewed film of the attack on Pearl Harbor, or the falling twin towers in New York? We submit few if ever. Those in schools of education today have no remembrance of these events, and unfortunately few have learned and reviewed in classes of civics and National history these and other similar events. To many, they are of no significance to their daily lives, and will spend little if any effort to study, read, or hear of those personal accounts of those that have suffered the effects of conflict and war. Too many have lost sight of mortality and eternity. They have never held the dead in their passing and been confronted with their own mortality. They see little future beyond this life and only strive for whatever, whenever, wherever they can get their fix, their itch scratched, their desire for today met.
Our Nation is being filled with godless people who seek only personal gratification at the expense of anyone who gets in their way. They do not have the desire or want to spend the time to remember the honored dead. They see no value in the American flag, The Constitution of the United States of America, or in the Bill of Rights. They misunderstand the word FREEDOM, believing it to be FREE to do what you want to do, not FREE to do what you ought to do. The former is man’s moral corruption, the latter is God’s plan. Our prayer is that many will turn their lives around and live in the ever-after while walking in the present.
Spend some time tomorrow in reverence to our honored dead, to those who GAVE ALL. Remember what has been lost. Remember what lost it. Be thankful that you are the recipient of their sacrifice, for without it we would not enjoy in our great Nation our FREEDOM and LIBERTY.
