Memorial Day

The dead we honor today are a great example for us who seek to practice the "strategy of dying"

It's Memorial Day in the U.S., a day we honor men and women in the Armed Forces who have died protecting our freedoms. My readers from around the globe will understand, I'm sure, if I take a moment here to express thanks to God, thanks to their families, thanks to those who serve today, and most of all thanks for those who gave all for their country.

My last entry was about a strategy of dying. There's an obvious connection here that may help answer the question I left open last time: if "dying" is a strategy for success and honor, yet we're not talking about literal, physical death, just how do we go about practicing this strategy?

In the John 12:20-26 passage we looked at last time, Jesus said,

He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Jesus is saying we must recognize there is something far more important here than our own lives. Men and women who volunteer for armed service see that there is something far bigger than themselves to serve. They do not enter, and they do not fight, with the intention of dying, but they give up all they have and they are willing to die, if need be, in service of the great cause.

All great militaries have traditions of honor and glory, and all recognize the path to honor is through the deepest discipline.

So it is for followers of Christ. We do not recklessly throw our bodies in the line of death; that's not what this "dying" is about. Instead, we recognize this life is not the greatest value, but the higher cause of God's glory is instead. We give up anything that interferes with our service of his cause. We give up our attempts at a linear path to honor and glory; instead we follow God's deep road of service, suffering, sharing in the fellowship of Jesus' sufferings .

With this attitude, with the encouragement of fellow servants of Christ, we are ready to lay our lives down in Christ's service. Few of us actually will, at least among the English-equipped, Internet-connected audience that reads this blog. (Many do in other parts of the world.) But that's up to God. He will chart our paths, he will design a curriculum for each of us that will take us into the fellowship of Jesus' sufferings and back up toward honor.

The reward is sure. Jesus most emphatically does not call us to despise all potential life for ourselves. He holds out honor as the promise in the future, for those who will trust him to hold him for us until then. In the meantime, we seek service instead.

Posted: Mon - May 30, 2005 at 07:14 AM |

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Memorial Day

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson