Bought With A Price

Bought With A Price…

As families gather around the grill this summer, I wonder if we will learn from the sacrifices of those who have given their lives for the cause of Freedom. Will the spilled blood on battlefields all over this world change us? Make us better? More caring, less hateful? Will our nation somehow be different because of everything they went through? Will their wounds, their deaths mean anything to us?

I believe that there is a lot in our culture to make me think so. It seems as if today, more and more people are showing gratitude to our veterans for their service. Our sentiment at their willingness to go when the call to defend freedom was given seems to pervade our hearts and minds as never before. Acknowledgements, acts of kindness, letters, care boxes, seem to be flowing non-stop. It is as if any time you and I see a uniform, we are conditioned to mention the dedication to our nation. I know that many of our vets are appreciative of a culture that is kinder toward them, than in the 60’s and 70’s, when they often got spit on or cussed at for serving.

Yet, if all we do is say thank you to the soldier standing in front of us, but do not change who we are or how we live, then we have completely missed the point. Maybe the deeper question is this: will the spilled blood of those men and women make us better people? More caring and less hateful? More one nation under God? More indivisible? Will our nation truly have liberty and justice for all? Will we be the kind of people who know that we have been bought with a price? In a world filled with people screaming at each other at the top of their lungs, did any of this sacrifice really matter? The freedoms we enjoy are not just some pious platitudes we learned as we were forced to recite the pledge, they are words that mean something. Mean everything. We have truly been bought with a price.

The last time you thanked a vet, what went through your mind? You see I fear that our acts of gratitude have become just empty words we recite in the same manner as when a person says “bless you” after a sneeze. We thank a vet, not because we really are reflecting on their sacrifice, but because we have been conditioned to do so. We thank them, and then we forget about it, as we move on to whatever our day brings. Like a check mark on a to-do list. We puff up our conceited hearts with pride that we have done our civic duty. Now can move on to more pressing matters like what kind of beer or buns to buy for the Monday afternoon grilling party we are hosting.

But it ought to be more, shouldn’t it? We have been bought with a price. Our nation was bought with a price. Our Barbeque grills and boats and homes and family play times were bought with a price. The sacrifices of these men and women should flood through our veins like the verses of scripture. Every moment of every day we have the freedom to be different people, changed people, not because of what we do, but because of what they did for us. The truth is that every day should be a sort of Memorial Day.

As you bite into that hotdog this weekend, stop. Put your gluttony aside for two seconds and reflect on what it means to be in these United States of America. Be different somehow. Be a better person. More compassionate. Kinder. Less offensive. Shout less and love more. Hug somebody like you mean it. Because believe me, the men and women who have died on our battlefields are watching from heaven and they get it. They understand that we have all been bought with a price. They just wish we would remember it, too.