Shared Gratitude
A ONE Church Memorial Day Meditation
ONE Church Devo friends, good morning and a blessed Memorial Day to you. I type from Cromwell, CT, where my extended family have gathered this weekend to celebrate son Sam’s graduation from Wesleyan University. The one casualty of a glorious weekend was, unfortunately, my attention to you and a certain 4 AM Eastern arrival in your ebox. I apologize for not putting a devotional out on time this morning. It just slipped my proud-Dad mind. To compensate the gaffe, I belatedly rerun an encouraging holiday note that many of you appreciated a year ago. Enjoy!
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15.13)
“I love my job!”
Hearing these words from anyone is lovely. It was utter bliss, though, to hear them last Tuesday afternoon from my beloved wife, Liz. As the editor in chief of the Texas Law Magazine, one part of Liz’s job is to develop new story ideas for future issues. In this interest, she happened to spend that Tuesday reading through old files from the 1940s in the UT Law School’s archives.
Sifting through yellowed 80-year-old academic records in a dusty room may not sound to us like an “I love my job!” experience. But Liz discovered a poignant period, when the Law School community deepened connection with one another under dire circumstances. During World War II, Texas Law enrollment numbers and faculty size plummeted, as most of the community shipped out to serve the war effort. Professors and students alike heard duty call and were now spread across the States and the globe. The few who remained in Austin kept close watch on their travels and their toil. To update them and to connect with one another, those who served sent letters from postings around the world, updating their whereabouts and their work.
Liz was struck, as she read these wartime dispatches, by how normal self-sacrifice became to those who served. Their missives detailed high-risk operations, challenging missions, precarious travel, and fierce combat experience – all in quite understated terms. The insecurities and dangers they faced had become their customary way of life. Sacrifice was second nature.
Memorial Day lands variously for people of faith. Some of us see an occasion strewn with red, white, and blue bunting and a sober celebration of military martyrs. For others of us, it’s a sad reminder that humanity has not yet “beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks.” Still others of us are so far removed from military people that the observance feels alien to our lives.
The words of John 15.3 are famous: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” When Jesus spoke them, his mind was not on soldiers but on disciples and, surely, on his own upcoming walk to the cross. But the substance of the passage can inform our Memorial Day observance. However differently we experience this holiday, I hope we can all see it as a time to lean toward one another; to share for a moment our deep human admiration and gratitude for soldiers across time who have run into the fire for us; and to appreciate the sort of self-sacrifice that became normal to a generation of Texas Law students eight decades ago.
Have a blessed Memorial Monday!
Prayer — God, we’re grateful for courage and self-sacrifice wherever they appear. Please continue turning each of us into people who take ourselves out of the center for the common good. Transform us, in Jesus. Amen.