Memorial – intended to commemorate someone or something.

Yesterday was Memorial Day. A day set aside to commemorate those that have lost their life in service to our country.

A seemingly consistent theme from those in the service is one of "doing their part". Being a part of protecting this great land and the cause of freedom world wide is something that they are inspired to do.

Maybe this next part is easier to say because I never served in the Armed Forces, but now we must do our part.

As we think of ways to commemorate those that have lost their life, the best way is to lives ours to the fullest.

Do you think they died with the hopes that we would spend our lives watching TV and complaining about our lot in life?

I don’t think that is what most of them had in mind.

Some of things I imagine those brave heroes thinking about as they faced mortal danger.

Their best girl back home. The love of their life. They probably pictured a life together filled with love, smiles and happiness. Take a minute to look at your spouse today as if through the eyes of a young soldier. Appreciate them the same way he would if given the chance.

The opportunity for meaningful work. I imagine them sitting around at night dreaming up enterprising schemes and plans to rule the business world. Take a fresh view of your job today. Think about as if you have just started after returning home from war.

To love others as ourselves. I imagine them struggling with all the senseless violence, meanness and coldness displayed in regards to human life. I imagine many of them making a vow to help others the minute they are given the chance. Today, smile at a stranger as if you had just seen the depths of humanity and were determined to balance that ledger through your own helpfulness and service to others.

These are just a few things that popped into my head to think about as ways to honor those that have gone before us.

Anything come to mind for you?

Make it a great day.

Jake

As in the past, I also feel compelled to share my two favorite pieces from Abraham Lincoln in honor of our Veterans.

Gettysburg Address

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. 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.

Letter to Mrs. Bixby

Dear Madam,

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln