5-28-18 Memorial Day and Reflections of Hope

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Daily Jot: Memorial Day and Reflections of Hope - Bill Wilson - www.dailyjot.com
 
Over the Memorial Day weekend, many will have the opportunity to spend time with friends and family on several occasions. As we come together, we should thank the Lord for those who gave their lives that we might be free. We should also recognize that the world in which we live, that the nation where we are citizens, is far different from what it was even 30 years ago. We as a nation have fast accelerated into a humanistic mindset where not much that is time honored or traditional is celebrated. The young men who I coached in football always were fascinated by some of our old timer stories about participating in Memorial Day parades when we were kids, ending at the local cemetery.
 
There, the graves of who served in the military were decorated with wreaths or flags, followed by a sermon and prayer for our nation and those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom. Local Memorial Day services nowadays are often not well publicized. We may not know about them. What we do know about are the freedoms we have lost in the past generation--freedoms that were taken away not by some foreign force, but by the government itself. As we view the Bill of Rights through the headlines, we see that the government--those who we elected--are working to undermine these rights that were held by the Founders as "self evident" endowed by our "Creator" with a capital "C," meaning God Almighty.
 
My son Christian and I often discuss these things. He says that "progressives" (that's what they are politely called in his college classes) care little about the history of our nation because they believe that mankind is always progressing beyond the past. He says they fail to recognize the mistakes made in history and the knowledge and wisdom that comes from learning about those mistakes. That, he says, is what makes them prone to making unwise and bad decisions. He says that they see the Word of God as fable and reject the foundational principles of God's law and the law of nature's God. It is his generation's way of explaining why our nation is in the mess that it is in.
 
He believes there is hope in his generation, although he admits that Christian values are diminishing within it. I believe there is hope, too. The Bible says a lot about hope. One of my favorites is Romans 5:1-5, "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation works patience; And patience, experience; and experience, hope: And hope makes not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is given unto us." Don't let anyone steal your hope, your faith, or your will to stand on them.

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