Memorial Day-A Time of Remembering, lest we forget...lest we forget

“What do these stones mean?” the children of Israel asked their fathers as they viewed the memorial stones.  They were told that it was the evidence of God‘s presence leading all of their people into the freedom of the promised land.  Every child was to be told the meaning of the stones lest they forget who it was that gave them their freedom and how it was done.    

On Memorial Day many of us will view the gravestones of our brave countrymen who fought and died for America.  Our children, too, must learn the meaning of those stones, lest the memory of those who lay beneath them and what they fought for, be forgotten-and their deaths be in vain.

They were Americans.  They came from all over our nation:  the north, the south, the east and the west, to answer their country’s call.  They were the rich and the poor of every color; they were from the farmlands and the cities; they were the scholars and the factory workers from all different ethnic backgrounds, but they were all Americans.  They were prepared and dedicated to defend our freedom.  They stood for America, where a man could be a man-where he could hold his head up and walk shoulder to shoulder with every other man, without having to grovel and cower in fear before tyrants.  They stood for America, where the circumstances of one’s birth did not dictate the course for one’s life-the place where a man could choose and fulfill his own destiny.   He could, with hard work and God-given ability, make his dreams come true.  Yes, America has always been the place where dreams could come true!  We even call it, “The American Dream!”

You and I can still dream the dream only because of the sacrifices of those beneath the gravestones.  What do these stones mean?  Do these stones help us remember that there is a cost for our freedom?  A note was found beside one brave American who had died in battle and it said, “I gave my today for your tomorrows.”  He gave his all.  Can we give anything less than he?  We are living those tomorrows for which he died.  We are alive and can live for those American ideals for which he and many other Americans died.  We can honor their lives by lifting high “the sacred fire of liberty” and passing it on to future generations, lest we forget…lest we forget.