Untitled Sermon

Memorial Day

We’re here today to honor our service members that made that final sacrifice for us.

During our Civil War we lost over a half million people. I'm sure most of them didn’t want to leave their homes to fight on distant battlefields. Many didn’t even volunteer. They didn’t go to war because they loved fighting. They were called to be part of something bigger than themselves. They were ordinary people who responded in extraordinary ways in extreme times. They rose to the nation’s call because they wanted to protect a nation which had given them, has given us, so much... Every city, town, and village in the United States... As you would expect, people started visiting their loved ones. Families that some had to travel would arrange a picnic.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

It started being called "Decoration Day" on may 5th 1868, when Gen Logan, commander of the 'Grand Army of the Republic', issued General Orders No. 11, for which May 30th "is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion." The orders expressed hope that the observance would be "kept up from year to year while a survivor of the war remains to honor the memory of his departed comrades."

This original date was chosen because it was not the date of any particular battle, and most flowers are in full bloom for now.

Congress passed the 'National Holiday Act of 1971' which set Memorial Day to the last monday of May.

On May 30th 1868 President Ulysses S. Grant presided over the first Decoration Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. James A. Garfield, a civil war General , said: "I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion, If silence is ever golden, it must be here beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung.

Would you join me for a quiet Moment of Remembrance to honor those people that laid down their lives so we could be here today?