This Memorial Day - Remember

"'Remember': to bring to mind or to think of again.", according to Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary. 'Remember'.

It is Memorial Day Weekend and I have been hearing for weeks about what Wal-Mart wants me to remember, not to mention, Target, Macy's, several auto dealerships, Walgreens, and Sam's, yet I know that what they want me to remember is not what I need to remember. What I need to bring to mind or to think of again is not something so easily quantified or put on the auction block. No, what I need to remember has to do with the sacrifice of others for my life . . . which makes what Wal-Mart wants me to remember far easier, but much less beneficial. To ponder the gift of one's life for another is inconceivably difficult, so complete and final the gift. Yet, there it is: this weekend we remember those for whom the only acceptable gift was the gift fully given in self . . . and we are the grateful, if not a bit uneasy, recipients.

The tendency in my lifetime has been focus on those who have given of themselves in service to our country in WWI, WWII, Korea and Viet Nam, but then, that just names the context of my growing up. Today, kids under the age of 12 have only known war . . . and the names of those who died in such a wars . . . and those before them remember The Gulf War, Libya, The Second Gulf War, Grenada, and a wide variety of places where the United States has been 'present' for others to the current day. War has a cost and that cost is flesh and blood.

This weekend we remember flesh and blood whose names we may or may not know, but whose very existence has made our existence easier, maybe even possible. We remember precisely because we cannot afford to forget, for to forget is to dismiss their sacrifice, to disparage our heritage, and to spit upon the very history we cannot afford to again repeat. We remember because, in their self-giving, someone who did not know us, still chose to live and die for us. We remember, for affluence and time often foster an amnesia that dooms those who forget their root to repeat their past behaviors. We remember for we are eternally grateful.

'Remember', for you have been remembered. 'Remember' and live for those who, like you, need someone to live for them. 'Remember' . . . that in thanking those who have served and those who have given their lives completely, we might come to a broader and deeper understanding of the life and freedoms we so enjoy.

Remember, giving thanks to God for the luxury of such a time of remembering, then live towards that day when all people might know it as well and Remember.