Gratitude to Those Who Paid the Ultimate Price for our Freedom

Today we honor all of those men and women who gave the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, those serving in all branches of the military.  Like Jesus, who died to set us free and to share His inheritance with us in heaven, the men and women of the military died so that we here in the U.S. and around the world would know freedom from the violence of war and "inherit" peace, so to speak!

Because of the sacrifices of those men and women who served in our military, we are, on the one hand, free here in the U.S. in so many ways: free to plant our gardens, to play in our parks, to visit our neighbors without fear of losing our lives by the likes of a Hitler or by  leaders who taunt their power by a show of force, a parade of military equipment and hundreds and hundreds of men and women and even children marching  like tin soldiers in front of a country's leader. 

On the other hand, we might ask ourselves:  are we really free? Have we sold our freedom to addictions flaunted as "must haves," or "must dos?"  Have any of us become a slave to consumerism, materialism, relativism, sexism? Are any of us locked into attitudes of prejudice and/or hatred? Have any of us chained ourselves to being judges of others, of being this world's superior cynics, of being superior to others, above others and deaf and blind to those in need?

If any of the above is true,  we believe the words of Psalm 68 of today's liturgy: "God arises; his enemies [and ours] are scattered, and those who hate him flee before him. As smoke is driven away, so are they  [our enemies of any kind] driven; as wax melts before the fire. But the just rejoice and exult before God;  they are glad and rejoice."  Let us "sing to God, chant praise to his name" for the freedoms we enjoy and those who won them for us!  It is God ultimately who has given us a home where freedom reigns, whether that home be our country, our State, or the home in which we are raising our family to serve and worship the one true God. It is God who leads us out of our "prisons," away from that which enslaves us, and protects us from the "Hitlers" of our world!