Daily Broadside | Memorial Day 2024

Several times each year I intentionally remind myself of my freedoms and that those freedoms have come at a cost. One of those occasions is Memorial Day.

I found the following poem, written by Wallace Stevens, an American modernist poet who published his first book of poetry (Harmonium) in 1923, just over 100 years ago. In it was a poem called “The Death of a Soldier.”

‘The Death of a Soldier’

Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.

He does not become a three-days’ personage,
Imposing his separation,
Calling for pomp.

Death is absolute and without memorial,
As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops.

When the wind stops and, over the heavens,
The clouds go, nevertheless,
In their direction.

The line that caught me is, “Death is absolute and without memorial.”

Is it true that death is “without memorial”? Perhaps as an event death does its work and offers nothing more. Death itself only takes and provides no memorial.

But as a matter of shared inevitability among us, we recognize that, by nature, there is nothing more here for a person after death, and we make an effort to keep a memory of the deceased alive through our mourning, our cemetaries, and our memorial days.

It is more poignant still when death is voluntarily embraced for a noble cause. Death comes for us all eventually, but some are willing to embrace it unnaturally early for the sake of protecting others they both know and would never know for generations to come.

That’s what this Memorial Day is for. You may not personally know any of the thousands of men and women who have given “the last full measure of devotion.” The many thousands of them probably never knew you. But you can breathe a prayer of thanks for them and their willingness to confront whatever threatened their contemporaries and the lives yet to come, including yours.

Be grateful today for those who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to you and to me.

Daily Broadside | Memorial Day 2023

The older I get, the deeper my appreciation for the hundreds of thousands of men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for me and millions of others who call the United States home. Every number in the video below represents one soldier, airman, seaman or marine who didn’t make it back from the conflict in which they fought. They died that I might live in freedom without fear.

The numbers are staggering.

Jesus also made the ultimate sacrifice for me and for millions of others; He died that I might live in spiritual freedom without fear of God’s wrath.

To those in the military who fought for my freedom to worship my Savior and to live my life in relative peace, I salute you.

Thank you.

Daily Broadside | Remember Their Last Full Measure

Daily Verse | Job 13:15a
Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.

It’s Memorial Day 2021, a national day set aside to remember and honor those who laid down their lives to defend and to perpetuate our freedoms. Those who have died on the battlefield, as Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address, “gave the last full measure of devotion.” They had no more to give.

Occasionally such sacrifice has to be made. Thomas Jefferson once wrote that “[t]he tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” We too often forget that our ease has been purchased with blood and violence.

Freedom is not our natural state. It must be zealously guarded, sometimes fought for, and never be taken for granted.

I wonder if the spirit of Lincoln’s speech still resides somewhere in the hearts of Americans:

“It is for us, the living to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is 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 here gave the last full measure of devotion.

“That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Take a moment today to remember, to be grateful, and to personally resolve that those who have died defending our freedoms have not died in vain.