Memorial Day 2023
Let us resolve...
Every year around Memorial Day and then again around 9/11 I take time to reflect. I ponder the greatness of our country and try to assess our progress(or lack of) towards preserving freedom and honoring those who have perished. “It is for us the living, rather, to dedicate here to the unfinished work” as so eloquently said by President Abraham Lincoln in the Gettysburg address.
If you can get a hold of a pre 1950's American history textbook or read the story of America outlined by authors who do not have an anti-God bias(The Light and the Glory by Peter Marshall is a good book in this vein) you will find an inspiring and accurate account of a people dependent on the God of miracles to settle a New World, build a Christian community, fight an impossible fight for independence against the greatest empire of that time and organize a nation under a constitutional republic unlike any that had come before. We truly are a special and unique people. A wonder really and a testament to our founders wisdom and the grace of God. What we have been given is worth the bloody cost paid by those whom we reverently remember this weekend.
Now more than at any time in recent memory America exists in a perilous time standing on the edge of a precipice. It has become more than uncertain whether or not we will extend the precious freedoms and liberties granted us to our children and grandchildren or doom future generations to the slavery and oppression all too familiar to mankind. How on earth did we get here?
I'm afraid the blame for the decline of the nation rests squarely on the Church. I firmly believe the Church will be held responsible for allowing a nation to backslide so terribly as our nation has done. Christians have been lulled into full compromise with the world and enticed into disobeying the Lord in regards to our collective mission. We are told to have no fellowship with the works of darkness but rather expose them and instead we have made excuse after excuse for wickedness. Pastors and teachers have been silent on abortion and sexual sin citing a desire to stay clear of politics or to seem welcoming to the world. As an entire generation of young people are being discipled away from Christ and all that is good and true we have been too afraid or too blind to speak the truth in love. A strong public stand against the flood of sin is the love this generation is needing to see. We are created, called and commissioned to be salt and to be light for all to see. Instead we have loved the praise of men, longed for earthly comforts and have found ways to coexist with evil.
Yet there is hope, great hope and here is why. Christ is head over His Church and He is alive and His body is active. Jesus told us the Church would be infiltrated by impostors and that their time of judgment was coming. There is a large (and getting larger by the day) remnant of those in America who are no longer asleep. Churches are beginning to fill up with truth hungry people. There is an army rising with the vision and purpose to expand God's kingdom here on earth just as it is in heaven. We are called and equipped to advance against the gates of hell and to overcome them. We win down here and we do it by the blood of the lamb, the word of our testimony(open our mouths!) and by loving not our lives unto the death(last full measure of devotion).
In the natural realm I don't see any easy way out of the mess we are in. The old play book of winning elections and depending on political leaders to radically change our course may not be in the cards. We can't count on winning another election. However we have a long history of overcoming impossible odds as Americans. General Washington should never have won the battles he won, should never have had an army to fight with and yet here we are. If God is for us(and He is) then we do have a path forward and it is a path towards total victory. We must wake up. We can no longer be passive spectators in our long national decline. I know that God is up to something big and you and I are invited to be active participants in it.
On this Memorial Day as we spend time with family, enjoy the outdoors and celebrate those who gave the ultimate sacrifice, lets do more. Lets determine to march together against the gates of Hell in our country. Let us determine our love of comforts are not more important than the future we can secure for the generations to come. Let us not lose heart or grow weary but rather trust God for victory. I would like to leave you with this excerpt from Lincoln's Gettysburg address.
“The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” - Abraham Lincoln
God bless,
Andrew