You can see it when you drive past Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. You can hear it when the final notes of Taps linger in the air. You can feel it deep in your chest when everyone stands for the pledge of allegiance at a football game. And you enjoy it every day you wake up in the United States of America: the price of freedom.
Our privileges and peace come with a price tag. Freedom isn’t free. It cost 6,800 American lives during the Revolutionary War, lives like Nathan Hale who courageously spied for the Continental Army, declaring with his dying breath, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” The price of liberty was paid again during World War II by heroic men like John Basilone, who single-handedly fought through 150 yards of Japanese lines to obtain more ammunition to continue fighting—and he returned to later fight at Iwo Jima although he could have gone home. Roy Benavidez paid the expense of liberty in Vietnam when he valiantly rescued a team of gunned-down soldiers with only a knife, earning him the nickname, “The Real Rambo.”
Thousands of self-sacrificial men and women wrote a blank check to freedom with their lives. Some never came home, some came home never the same. All gave some, and some gave all. And whether or not they realized it, their sacrifice was an exceptional emulation of Jesus, the Son of God, who gave His all for all the world—laying down His life on Calvary’s cruel cross for at-war-with-God sinners like you and I. These heroes gave their all for love of country and their fellow man, and there is no greater love than this: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13, KJV).
This is what Memorial Day is about. Not a long weekend. Not barbecues and camping by the lake. It’s a day to remember that the blessings we all relish were bought with blood by men and women whose names most of us will never know. And their heroism reminds us of the ultimate Hero who purchased salvation with His life’s blood (1 Peter 1:18-19).
Brandon is the pastor of Bandana Baptist Church in Bandana, Kentucky, where he lives with his wife, Dakota, their much-prayed for son, Oliver, and their three dogs. Brandon and Dakota previously served as foster parents through Sunrise Children’s Services of Kentucky. Brandon is also a published author and his Bible Gleanings columns are featured in over sixteen publications throughout Kentucky, Illinois, Tennessee, and Indiana. He is also a devotional contributor for Kentucky Today, a news publication of the Kentucky Baptist Convention, and an editor at Reforming the Heart.
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