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At this time each year we celebrate Memorial Day: A time when we visit the graves of departed loved ones. Where did this tradition begin? Why was this day established as a national holiday?
During the War Between the States, some southern women began to decorate the graves of both Union and Confederate soldiers who had died in battle. Out of their love and respect has grown this national holiday, celebrated in May of each year. Thus, the real reason for the day is to show respect for those who have defended our liberties. We are to “give honor to whom honor is due” as the Bible states (Romans 13:7). Certainly it is right to show respect to those who have laid down their all to keep our liberties secure.
The most noted speech ever given in honor of the defenders of liberty was by Abraham Lincoln. He spoke these immortal words on Nov. 19, 1863, on the battlefield at Gettysburg where over 50,000 men died in battle. Lincoln said there, Continue reading
The unveiling of this centerpiece of “His Story” begins in an obscure village in Palestine called Nazareth. An unknown young maiden is startled one day by a visit from an angel who identifies himself as being no less than Gabriel himself. He tells Mary (for that was her name) that she will have a child and that this child will be called “the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32). It was further revealed to her perplexed fiancé, Joseph, that, “She shall bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). Mary is shocked! She? Bear the long-awaited “Anointed One”? She was to give birth to the One Who would pay man’s debt to God? She was to bring into this world the One Who would fix what we had messed up in the Garden of Eden? This seemed incredible! Yet, the credibility of this mighty angel standing before her is hardly debatable.
By miracles, He brings Abraham’s children to the desert mountain known as Sinai. In an awesome display of thunder, lightning, and the quaking of this huge mountain, God shows these “children of Israel” that He is the God who created them and is worthy of their utmost respect. To begin this mind-altering process in man, God calls Moses up on the mountain, and, with His torch-like Hand, begins to engrave letters into the rock. Moses watches in awe as ten commands are burned into the side of Sinai. God then with His finger cuts the outline of two tablets separating them from the rest of the rock bed. Moses, watching the smoking tablets, begins to read them: “You shall have no other gods before Me…” (Exodus 20: 3). Ten such commands reveal how God thinks about Himself, about man, and how He expects us to treat Him and those He has created. God tells Moses to take them to the people at the foot of the mountain. He wants men to know how He thinks, and, because He wants them not to forget it, He’s written it down.
So what now?
Besides the Tree of Life, there was another Tree in that Paradise: The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. This tree represented the opposite way of life. This way of living would be motivated by what happened outside of man. Instead of being inspired by the moving of the Life of God deep within him, if he chose to eat of this tree man would be rejecting God’s offer to come inside him and be his life. He would be choosing a way in which he would make his own decisions, instead of allowing the flowing will of God to come through him.
The clause “It is finished”, in the Greek language in which Jesus spoke it, means to reach a goal. It also means to pay a debt in full, so that the books balance. Jesus had reached His goal of paying our debt. But to understand the “debt” Jesus was paying, we must revisit the scene in the Garden of Eden: When God begins to work with a pile of dust. He carefully shapes it into the form of a man. Once this human body is finished to perfection, God “blows” His own breath into the nostrils of this pile of clay. All of a sudden, the form moves! Light comes to its eyes! It gets up and stands erect like God. I can see Father God turning to the rest of His creation and saying, 
It is such an amazing story! Patrick, a young, former slave in Ireland, was called by God in the 400’s to go share the Gospel of Christ with those same Irish people who had enslaved him just a few years before! Yet, without fear, he boldly entered again into that realm and became the agent of liberty to those who had once been his agents of slavery.
“If My people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”
In 1857-58 God came in revival in this nation in a remarkable way. A businessman named Jeremiah Lanphier started a noonday prayer meeting in New York City. Within a month, hundreds were praying at noon and it began to spread across the region. Some prayer meetings at noon sprang up without knowing of the New York prayer meetings. God began to move across the nation bringing hope to many who had become hopeless. The church had become so weak it couldn’t even decide if slavery was right or wrong. And whenever the Church leaves the Scripture as its standard society always goes downhill. We can always tell the strength of the Church by how much its influence controls the institutions of education, business, and civil government. Jesus said,