There are no adequate words to thank our veterans for the price they have paid for our freedom, but nonetheless, we must try. In their sacrifice, they reflect the heart of our Savior, who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Those who have died in our wars and those who have been willing to die have demonstrated the love of a true friend. For all those friends in our nation who have put themselves in that position, we say with a heart of gratitude, “Thank you for your love and your sacrifice. May God richly bless you.”
Our freedoms always have been and always will be costly. It takes watchful diligence to keep those freedoms which have been fought for in the past and are needful for today and for tomorrow’s children.
Many of our leaders recognized this. In America’s God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations, we find these quotes:
History failed to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline.
General Douglas MacArthur
But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.
President Abraham Lincoln
Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.
United States Supreme Court 1892, Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States
All must admit that the reception of the teachings of Christ results in the purest patriotism, in the most scrupulous fidelity to public trust, and in the best type of citizenship.
President Grover Cleveland
Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Stephanie B. Blake
November 2019
One Focus Ministries 