MEMORIAL DAY MEDITATION

Because, most of human history has been marked by wars and conflicts of one kind of another, we gather together each year to honor and to remember those who have joined humanity's struggle against evil, oppression and injustice on our behalf.

Some are friends, relatives and neighbors.

Others are completely unknown to us except as statistics or names on grave stones, plaques or war memorials.

Some have given their lives and some have given their health.  Bodies scarred, they  still carry fragments of bullets and shrapnel, or walk with false limbs.  Others exist from day to day suffering from post traumatic stress syndrom, the pain of their wounds or from exposure to the instruments of war. 

How then shall we honor these men and women who have served their country and those who continue to do so? Are flowers and flags enough or does such heroic self-giving call for action on our own part?

God answers through Jeremiah 29:7: we are to pray for and seek the welfare of this community. The call goes out to find ways that we together can bring peace, justice and freedom in our own troubled time and place.

As those we honor bore the torch of victory over evil on battle fields in foreign lands, how now can we bring the light of hope to our own community?
In 1861, Juliet Ward Howe wrote, “As Christ died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.”  

Let us live to bring goodness and mercy and justice to all.

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