Oh death, where is thy sting?

This week is painful and sweet. Memorial Day is here and it represents everything to many and nothing to some. What is it for you?

A couple of years ago Memorial Day took on new meaning for me because I buried a student who had come through our church and gone off to serve his country in the Navy. He lost his life during active service, but in a tragic and completely horrifying way. While serving in a place that is in the heart of true peace, he was murdered by a fellow soldier--a co-worker, in fact that he knew pretty well. Since "Memorial Day" is about soldiers who have lost their lives in the service and defense of this country, my friend's death hit hard that Memorial Day.

Last year on Memorial Day weekend my wife and I were ministering to friends who had lost their precious baby. They had known for some time that their beautiful son was not alive, but he wasn't born until near Memorial Day. This is now the one year anniversary of his going home. Most days, it still does not make sense. Some days it still feels like he is still here somehow. And as I wrote the first sentence in this paragraph I have been reminded that it is often our friends--this precious boy's parents--who are ministering to Nikki and me, not us ministering to them.

So these two deaths are both hard to understand, out of "order" and troubling in my spirit. I know you could tell me stories just like these and we could wonder and reason together about why these things happen.

But then we come to Memorial Day. Not Iwo Jima, D-Day or Normandy. The ultimate expression of a soldier giving his life so that others could be free has nothing to do with armies or America. Don't get me wrong, I stand in awe and thanks of soldiers who have given their life so I can type my thoughts and put them online (and live freely and drink clean water and, well I could go on forever . . .). I LOVE Memorial Day. But truth be known, one day America will look nothing like it does today. Freedoms will be different--maybe gone altogether. This country could stand as she is for another 800 years (like the Roman Empire) or be unrecognizable in 8 years. So celebrating that Memorial Day which makes us proud to be Americans is good and right--but temporary, at best. It's just for us who live here now.

But there is an eternal and perfect symbol for freedom you will never lose.

It's the cross, right? The eternal and perfect memorial which symbolizes a once-for-all sacrifice to actually pay for the sins of every person who trusts Christ alone for forgiveness. This is not a dying or fleeting or temporary freedom that allows me to live how I want. It's a permanent and eternal freedom that compels me to live--forgiven--in the way that God wants. We cannot use this freedom as a license to sin, but must allow it to be a motive to hate sin.

This Memorial Day, I encourage you to make veterans prominent in your hearts and thinking, but to make Christ pre-eminent. Death came for Jared and Owen when we least expected it. Physical death will come for me, too. I honor people who bring freedom for a little while on this earth, but I RUN to the one who delivers my soul forever from the prison of hell.

If you live as a free person for 80 years and then find that Memorial Day was insufficient for the freedom of your soul you will be a miserable and wretched soul forever. My greatest desire as that we each find permanent freedom and a true eternal escape from death itself. That has happened in Christ.

Happy Memorial Day!

Coming home

I have a million things to say about Washington, D.C.--maybe more. Let me resort to my stand-by bullet method to summarize (For in-depth analysis and pictures, check out my wife's blog. She's a better writer, she includes pictures and she has music on her blog.):

• There are absolutely no words in my arsenal to convey the movement of heart and depth of appreciation for God's grace that constantly swept over me while (and since) walking in the history that is our Nation's capital. None.



• The founding fathers, even when Christless, led from a profound sense of duty and a passion to serve our country to the death. I was struck with the contrast between those fathers and the circus of rhetoric in Washington today. The day I appreciated George Washington's resignation of his commanding post in the army, and then his resignation from the Presidency (both times to go home to/with his wife, family and farm) was the same day Hillary Clinton was posturing for attention from the media because, after changing her position on driver's licensing for illegal immigrants, she cried "foul" over her opponent's criticism. We used to be led by men (and women) employed over a sense of duty and honor. We are now led by those who can market themselves. Politics has moved from the heights to the depths, approaching even the depths of the celebrity royalty found in Hollywood. This lesson is written everywhere in D.C.



• The marathon was a wonderful experience, but my race time stunk. I am thrilled to have run the Marine Corps Marathon.
  


• Quick snapshots:


• Best single monument: For me, it was Washington. Like it's namesake the Washington Monument stands alone and tall as a symbol against our historical horizon of how we began to become great.



• Don't miss it: I hate to stay on the theme, but, Mount Vernon. The history, the vision, and a picture of a man (Washington) who ordered his private life.



• Bring you to tears (tie): WWII monument, Changing of the Guard at Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, my first sight of the White House from atop Washington Monument.



• Want to, but can't look away: Holocaust Museum.



• It was okay: International Spy Museum



• Better than advertised: Library of Congress (do not miss it!)



• Worse than advertised: Peterson House ("House Where Lincoln Died") Don't go out of your way for this. Biggest plus: it's free.
  



• Bummer: Museum of American History: closed.



• Nice: A bunch of exhibits from MAH on display at Air and Space Museum. I know it's ridiculous, but seeing C3PO--pretty cool.
  



• Unbelievable surprise: The House of Reps (we had a Capital tour) took not one, but two votes on separate issues while we were sitting in the balcony. Thanks, Liesl, for encouraging us to NOT schedule our tour on a Monday!

Okay. That's the man's overview. Now I close with this "we know" capstone: I love being home. I felt a kinship with George Washington (all right, that is a bit of a stretch) as we dipped beneath the clouds in Milwaukee. I looked down over the glum November shore of Lake Michigan with a swell of relief, pride, love and joy in my heart. George temporarily relocated to serve his country, but he couldn't wait to get home.

Me, too.

Never Forget

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001 I turned on my car radio as I travelled to a morning prayer meeting at a local school. I sat in my van doubtfully listening to the events of the story continue to unfold. A second plane? Another incident with a plane elsewhere?

The hatred and physical violence perpetrated against the United States on September 11, 2001 is unprecedented. There haven't been many wars on "our" soil in the last 100 years and never has there been that kind of attack against innocent civilians in the USA. How can this be?

But the war did not begin that day. The war, waged by religious extremists simply spilled over onto our soil that day. This war has been raging since the 8th Century and prior, as a religion expands through physical force and murder. This war is being fought in the Sudan and all throughout Africa. This war, when reduced to rhetoric, has been lost by well-meaning people throughout Europe.

We forget about the lessons we learned on September 11 when:

• We hate a religious extemist. The lesson we learned? Hate the hate.
  
• We confuse forgiveness and consequences. It's ironic that in practice most "liberal" leaders want to forgive the extremists while imposing no consequences; most "conservatives" want to impose consequences without forgiveness. Lesson learned? Forgiveness and consequences co-exist in our hearts if we are wise and just.
  
• We trust our government (leaders, military, diplomacy). Lesson learned? Since the overthrowing of deceit is up to God, we must pray as if the entire enterprise is up to God because it is.
• We vote in our next election based on untried and unproven strategies. Lesson learned? Listen for this theme in your candidate's speeches: JUSTICE. I think Tony Blair got it right:

• "So what do we do?

  Don't overreact some say. We aren't.

  We haven't lashed out. No missiles on the first night just for effect.

  Don't kill innocent people. We are not the ones who waged war on the innocent. We seek the guilty.

  Look for a diplomatic solution. There is no diplomacy with Bin Laden or the Taliban regime.

  State an ultimatum and get their response. We stated the ultimatum; they haven't responded.

  Understand the causes of terror. Yes, we should try, but let there be no moral ambiguity about this: nothing could ever justify the events of 11 September, and it is to turn justice on its head to pretend it could.

  The action we take will be proportionate; targeted; we will do all we humanly can to avoid civilian casualties. But understand what we are dealing with. Listen to the calls of those passengers on the planes. Think of the children on them, told they were going to die.

  Think of the cruelty beyond our comprehension as amongst the screams and the anguish of the innocent, those hijackers drove at full throttle planes laden with fuel into buildings where tens of thousands worked.

  They have no moral inhibition on the slaughter of the innocent. If they could have murdered not 7,000 but 70,000 does anyone doubt they would have done so and rejoiced in it?

  There is no compromise possible with such people, no meeting of minds, no point of understanding with such terror.

  Just a choice: defeat it or be defeated by it. And defeat it we must

The above picture will never return. It's just a picture and it's just buildings. But together we must never forget how the changed landscape forces us to consider justice.

In closing, God can only forgive me because of justice. He had to hold Someone responsible, and punish that Someone to the full extent of the Law in order to justly forgive me. Don't gloss over the extent of my sin. Grace and justice exist side-by-side as lessons learned on 9-11. Never forget.

Memorials

How in the world will our children know who God is and what He is all about if we don't show and tell them? Obviously, they won't.

When people talk to me about people in foreign countries (and in the US, for that matter) who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ they often equate that concept with an unfair God. Would God send these "innocent people" to a Christless eternity? Without getting into these specifics (read Acts 4:12!) I usually start my response by reminding the questioner that in the Garden of Eden, and again after the Flood, that every father, mother and child on the face of the earth knew who God was and what he had said. Every one of then. So if there has been someone unfaithful, it hasn't been God, but fathers. Obviously, if fathers had been faithful from that day to this, every person on the face of the earth would have heard of the faithful God. But WE have not been faithful. God has been completely faithful.

I love the story in Exodus of God delivering His people from slavery and into the Promised Land. He said that one representative from each tribe should pile a stone on the West Bank of the Jordan so that "when your children ask for generations to come you could tell them" exactly what God has said and done. A stone tells a story to our children.

My wife has helped me so much with establishing traditions. One of our Memorial Day traditions is to go listen to the stones. We listen to the stone at the head of my faithful and dead grandfather, Owen. We listen to the stone at the head of Nik's grandfather, Richard. We listen to the instructions as they roll out of the lives of Ervin and Mildred and Jean and Bea (Bea is still living!). We are still watching and learning from Richard and Paula and Pam and Dennis. May God give us many years till we establish these stones.

A few rocks are just rocks. They may be inscribed with words, but they tell sad and selfish stories of faithlessness (think of the rocks at the head of Cain or Ham or Esau). They tell the stories of sons who could not get over the sins of their youth, who couldn't get others-focused, who did not rest in the promise of God. They are just rocks. Their own kids don't care what the stones say, because they know what the lives said. But there are other rocks that are a testament that God can and does change (man transformed) the heart.

Abel (you didn't live long, but you lived right).

Noah (you devoted all of your best years to one God-sized project in one place).

Jacob (with all your selfishness God still used your faith, Israel).

Erv (you, Mr. farmer, lived with simple faith)

Owen (you gave real life to one woman and died after a heart attack on the 4th tee box).

Richard (you came to Christ late in life--but you came !)

Oh, God, let me be faithful to expose my children to rocks that speak loudly! May You give them the ears to hear and the eyes to see. One day I want my rock to tell a story of God's faithfulness.

"What is this rock for?" It's another testament to the God who is faithful and transforms the hearts of men and women.