VETERANS: Thanks for Keeping Us Free!

There is no way we can repay our veterans, but we can say thank you at every opportunity. We, and free people the world over, owe them an enduring and resounding THANKS on this Veterans Day. Our veterans have not only protected our freedom but have done the same for people all over the world.

This altruism reached new levels when our armies joined England and France to engage in the "war to end all wars." In 1918, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month, the world rejoiced and celebrated. After four years of bitter war, an armistice was signed. The war was over. America had entered the fray late but was essential to the final Allied victory. It was a costly venture in lives lost, crippling injuries, and through the deadly influenza they brought back with them.

It must be the spark of God within us that enables brave soldiers to be willing to lay down their lives for a people and a cause about which they could rightly say, “we have no dog in that fight.” Unless, of course, it is the wish that all should have access to those “unalienable rights” for which young men fought another costly war—one that established our great country.

We all know the “rest of the story;” one that seems to have no end. America has been so blessed that we cannot resist helping the oppressed of the world. Even between wars, we offered help in rebuilding nations that we had defeated. Along with Great Britain and at the insistence of President Truman, we embarked upon the Berlin airlift to keep Berliners alive when Russia cut off all land routes to them. That, too, was an amazing and seemingly impossible task.

Those who experienced it in Europe and the Pacific knew first-hand the enormity of the personal sacrifice of our people and appreciated greatly all their efforts. Unfortunately, future generations seem to see us as greedy, self-centered, unsophisticated interlopers. Funny, though, they know where to call when in need.

We can’t deny that America has its share of citizens who fit that description. However, our national soul, for the most part, remains centered on Jesus’ command to “do unto others…”

May it never change!