Memorial Day in War and Peace

Spirituality Column #238
May 31, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Memorial Day in War and Peace
By Bob Walters

’Some thoughts for Memorial Day, when America remembers her war heroes who died that we might be free, fought that we might know peace, and served us that we might serve others.

-Memorial Day easily captures the context of Christian faith, as we offer to God prayers of thanks and remembrance for the sacrifice of others.

-Jesus Christ, it is supremely worth noting, died for our freedom. He invented the concept, really. It is something that never occurred to or in humanity until Christ died on the Cross, defeating death and erasing our sin: we were free. It was a gift we didn’t request, solved a problem we didn’t know we had and, with faith, provided a victory impossible to imagine: eternal loving relationship with the Creator God in heaven. That's what God wants for us.

-The Bible exhorts, “God is love.” Christ’s example teaches that love requires freedom. That must be God’s toughest task – loving us enough to provide our freedom, with which we choose whether to love God or not. God knows love resides only in the presence of freedom and the absence of coercion, for coercion robs freedom, drains the soul, stifles hope and strangles faith. Love dies. That’s not what God wants for us.

-The Bible does not mandate systems or festivals commemorating Christ, because Jesus appeared once for all, took on our sins once for all, was cleansed once for all, died once for all, and we were entrusted with His faith once for all. It’s why Jesus says of taking the bread and cup, His body and blood, “Do this in remembrance of me.”

- “Once for all” means the eternal God appeared in mortal time as Jesus Christ and entirely changed the game for humanity’s relationship with God. God no longer mandated a place or a time or a behavior – like a temple or a festival or a commandment – to access divine relationship. Christ, by His work once for all, is to be alive in our hearts always and everywhere … in faith.

-The greatest war is our war with Satan … we fight it every moment of our lives.

-The greatest memorial is our communion with Christ.

-The greatest peace is in Christ.

-The greatest victory abides not with the swift or strong, but belongs reliably to the humble and faithful.

-Victory is not a remembrance of yesterday, but a hope for tomorrow.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is named after his mother’s brother Bob, a naval aviator who died in WWII.