Just Singin' for Jesus...

"While I live I will praise the LORD; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being." (Psalm 146:2)

Hear me each Saturday and Sunday Afternoon at 4:00 "Discovering the Word"

 "What I think about when I sing the National Anthem…"

      I think about the families torn apart by Civil War.  Each side fighting with all their might for what they believed in.  I think about the standard bearers whose job it was to hold their banners high.  They couldn’t let them touch the ground or be taken by the enemy.  I think about how, when their flag fell, it was immediately picked up by someone else.  It was their source of strength, courage and hope.

    I think about the men of World Wars I and II, who left their homes to travel around the world to fight for the freedom of us all; men who fell in strange lands, never to come home.  I think about the soldiers who discovered the concentration camps and set their teeth with new resolve to make sure nothing like that ever happened again.

     I think about the Korean Veteran who once told me how his leg was blown off and how he laid in the field for three days looking at his own foot before the people gathering the dead realized that he was still alive!

    I think about our Vietnam Veterans who did an impossible job against impossible odds, doing as they were instructed, only to come home to fight on yet another battle field.  I think about how they were mistreated by so many who had no idea what they had been through.  Oh, that they could have just a taste!  I think about the embarrassment, the humiliation I felt when I invited Alan’s uncle over for supper and served him rice.  The sadness and horror that shadowed his face as he told me of the many friends he saw die in rice fields. 

    I think about our soldiers of today.  I think about how much harder it is to fight the enemy.  It’s not face to face anymore.  The enemy is often unseen, especially with the hit and run tactics of terrorists.  How much harder it must be to fight what you can’t see.

    I think about us here at home; the way we ‘armchair quarterback’ everything.  It’s because of their sacrifices that we have even that freedom.  To me, the National Anthem isn’t just a song to be sung at the beginning of ballgames, races and events. To me it’s a cry from our soldiers; is she still there?  Did we get the job done?  It’s a song of love, devotion, dedication, sacrifice and honor. When I look at our Flag and sing our Anthem, our song of praise and triumph, this is what I think about.  I think about them.  How so many through the years have looked to her not as a piece of material that stands for the United States, but as a standard of freedom, strength, courage and hope.