Some have the idea that it is no longer possible to love both God and Country. My love for God has never in the smallest way been hindered because I love my homeland. The cross is no less an emblem of God’s love because I salute the “Stars and Stripes.”

When I think of how mothers and fathers have cried and prayed as their son or daughter went marching off to war. Many of them would not return; soldiers who were never forgotten by those who loved then. How many sad hearts have cried because their young love was interrupted by a nightmare that no one wanted? Who will remember the little children who watched their hero go away like a fading light in a war’s long night?

“Jesus, remember me,” was a prayer that was prayed in a thousand ways on a fearful battleground. Pocket Bibles, pictures of loved ones, letters from home, and memories of happier summer days were held tightly in the hands of dying soldiers who closed their eyes as they remembered the ones they hoped would never forget them.

May we take a walk among the graves of our fallen soldiers this Memorial Day. Dare we ask, “What do these stones mean?” Each one is a chapter in a family’s story, a poppy in “Flanders Fields,” and a teardrop in a cascade of innumerable tears that mix with the tears of God. They are never to be forgotten.

“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” John 15:13