Every year, as May draws to a close, we find ourselves in the company of memory. Memorial Day arrives not merely as a long weekend or the unofficial start of summer, but as a solemn reminder—a national moment of reverence. For many, it’s a day of backyard barbecues and flag-lined streets. But for others, it’s a folded flag on the mantle, an empty chair at the dinner table, a name etched in stone.
Before we go on enjoying the freedoms secured for us, it is right and necessary to pause—and remember.
America’s story, from the colonial era to the present day, has been written in valor and sacrifice. Abraham Lincoln once called it “the altar of freedom,” and on that altar, generation after generation has laid down the ultimate offering. Since the first shots rang out at Lexington and Concord, America’s young have shouldered the burden of war—not for conquest or riches, but for the preservation of ideals.
They fought and died in distant lands and in familiar fields.
Their blood sanctified places like Saratoga, Cowpens, and Brooklyn Heights during the Revolution. In the 19th century, it was New Orleans and Chapultepec, Gettysburg and Cold Harbor—where brother met brother in the unimaginable tragedy of civil war. The world grew larger, and so did the list of names and battles: Belleau Wood, the Meuse-Argonne, Normandy, Okinawa, Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh, Fallujah, and Helmand Province.
From the green hills of Korea to the dusty roads of Iraq, from the cliffs of Anzio to the caves of Tora Bora, Americans have answered the call. They fought in every climate, against every kind of enemy, in every conceivable theater—often in places they’d never heard of before they got there.
They gave their futures, so we could have ours.
These men and women did not seek war, nor did they go for glory. Many were just teenagers—farm boys from Iowa, welders from Pittsburgh, teachers, medics, immigrants who barely spoke English, but who believed in the promise of America. They stepped forward in times of national crisis not out of hate for what was in front of them, but out of love for what was behind them: family, community, country.
And while statistics mark the scale of our nation’s wars, it’s the individual stories that speak to the heart.
Stories like the Marine who threw himself on a grenade to save his brothers-in-arms. The pilot who held steady so others could escape. The soldier who wrote one last letter home, not knowing it would arrive after he was gone. The nurse who volunteered at the front lines and never came back. These stories are countless, yet each one is singular. Each life lost was a world unto itself—a child once held, a dream once dreamed, a future imagined but never lived.
And what does it all mean? Was it worth it?
Lincoln, who presided over a nation nearly torn in two, refused to offer pat answers. In his letter to Mrs. Bixby, a mother who had lost five sons in the Civil War, he acknowledged that no words could ever fully console such a loss. Still, he wrote of “the solemn pride” that must be hers, “to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.” He understood that grief and gratitude often live side by side.
Like Lincoln, we are humbled into silence by the magnitude of the loss. But we are not left without guidance. We find purpose in remembering—and in the act of living lives worthy of their sacrifice.
Memorial Day is not simply about death. It’s about what those lives stood for.
They stood for courage. They stood for service. They stood for the idea that some principles are worth defending—principles like liberty, equality, and human dignity.
In his funeral oration over the Athenian dead, Pericles said that those who died for freedom did so because they “judged happiness to be the fruit of freedom, and freedom the fruit of valor.” The same can be said of the American fallen. They didn’t just serve a flag—they served the people who stood beneath it. And in doing so, they became part of something eternal.
Scripture tells us: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” On every battlefield, in every generation, this truth has been lived out in real time. American sons and daughters have laid down their lives for their friends, for people they never met, and for a country still striving to live up to its own ideals.
So how do we honor them?
We start by remembering. We speak their names. We listen to their stories. We visit their graves and teach their legacies to our children. We stand at attention when the bugle plays “Taps.” We observe the National Moment of Remembrance at 3 p.m., not as a pause in the day, but as a moment of sacred reflection.
We also honor them by how we live. By engaging in our communities. By defending the truth. By helping those left behind—veterans, Gold Star families, wounded warriors. By being good stewards of the country they died to protect.
We honor them by living not just as free people, but as responsible people—people who remember that freedom is not an inheritance, but a responsibility renewed with each generation.
This Memorial Day, we don’t just grieve. We give thanks. We bow our heads and raise our flags. And with Lincoln, we pray “that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of [their] bereavement.” We pray that the families of the fallen may find comfort in “the cherished memory of the loved and lost.”
We pray that they find “solemn pride” in knowing their sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers helped to secure the very blessings we too often take for granted.
