For too many people, Memorial Day is nothing more than a long weekend that marks the beginning of the summer months.
Sure, if you asked them, they’d say they’re thankful for the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice to allow them that long weekend, and those lazy summer days. But that’s not what’s mostly on their minds on Memorial Day.
They’re thinking about grilling, boating, and praying that the 37% chance of thunderstorms doesn’t ruin 100% of their plans.
Who am I kidding? I think that way, too, unless I really stop and think about what we’re celebrating.
We’re celebrating sacrifice, but we’re also celebrating a holiday that’s not about us.
It’s about the people who came before us, whose shoulders we stand on.
When we forget that others came before us and that others will come after us, it becomes too easy to think it’s all about us.
But it isn’t, and remembering that allows us to have gratitude for the past, and hope for the future. It also encourages us to make the most of the time we’re here because we know that we’re just running one lap in a race of countless laps.
That’s one reason the Bible calls God the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” He wanted his people to know that he wasn’t just the God of their time, but of all time.
God’s kingdom doesn’t have a small window of time to grow because God is eternal and rules over all generations. But we have a small window because we aren’t eternal and live in only our generation.
What do we do about that? We ask God to teach us to number our days, and then we get busy doing what we can to ensure the generations to come will have our shoulders to stand on.
