Memorial Day

"For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes." I Corinthians 11:26

We have been traveling over the Memorial Day weekend, and as I determined to meditate daily on the cross, I found myself meditating on Memorial Day more than usual. Like most Americans, I see Memorial Day as the official beginning of summer, a day for travel, picnics, friends and family, not really a day to remember war dead. Somehow the whole idea of remembering the war dead seems a bit macabre, so I find it easier to avoid thinking about it at any length.

As I faced this for the first time at least consciously, I realized that this is the same thing I have been doing with the cross of Christ. Yet, Paul in Corinthians seems to suggest that the death of Jesus on the cross is something to be proclaimed. When I take communion, I tend to focus on the personal - that is, on my salvation - more than on the Lord's sacrifice. I feel a warm feeling of resting in His love, but I rarely think of this time as a proclamation. A proclamation seems to me to be anything but warm and fuzzy. In this situation it is a bold statement of what God has done - JESUS CHRIST DIED ON THE CROSS TO SAVE SINNERS!

Help me, Father God, to boldly proclaim the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, to embrace the very essential deathness of Your gift, to never hide from the baldness of truth behind a fuzzy warm feeling of affection for such a terrible sacrifice!