Given May 27, 2012

As we remember our militaty heros on this Memorial Day 2012, I will share something God gave me.  I help with a BibleTime Ministry club in a local elementary school and the leader asked if I could do a short piece on what Memorial Day is for the first – third graders.  This is what the Lord showed me:

I remembered reading about Joshua setting up an altar on the site where his people came across the Jordan River into the Promised Land.  I remembered something about telling the children what it stood for so I looked it up.  In Joshua 4:21-24, it says this, “He said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’  tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’  For the Lord your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The Lord your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over.  He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God.”  In this passage, the people were to tell their children when they asked what the pile of stones meant.  They were to pass on the memory of what God did for them and tell how great God was and is.

I showed the picture above to the kids and told them the story.  I told them today, we remember those in the military who fought and some died to give us the freedoms we enjoy today.  We are free to have a Bible Club in our schools, go to church where and when we want, pray in public and say what we want.  We want to have a memory of the past and present sacrifices others made for us to preserve our freedoms.  They seemed to understand.

Each child was also given a little cartoon that said, “On Thanksgiving, we give thanks for the things we have.”  “On Memorial Day, we give thanks for those who gave us the freedom to enjoy the things we have.”  God bless our military men and women.